The Big List Blog

The Birth of a Blog, Part 2: Guest Blogger – Lindsay Lebresco, Graco

(Continued from Part 1)

We wanted to understand the needs of our consumers even better. That is the fundamental shift we took on from “doing public relations” to quite simply “having a relationship with the public.”

We accomplished our goals in 3 ways:

Listening to the online conversation
Engaging with the online conversation
Participating in the online conversation

We would continue to monitor the online conversation about the brand as well as listen to what parents were talking about – to see what was going on in their lives and take stock in what was really important to them. We also heard that consumers were ready to have a relationship with the Graco brand (because of the high level of positive sentiment for the brand we found in our conversation mining in the online space).

That understanding helped us to put together a plan where we could engage in conversations with our consumers – whether it was providing some information about a newly launched product, correcting some misinformation about the brand, or most importantly, chiming in with nuggets of parenting wisdom about soothing an infant or potty-training a toddler (all via Graco employees personal experience- no expert advice here).

We also knew that online relationships can be made that much stronger by personal meet-ups so we started a series of Graco Get-Togethers where we would host a group of regional parenting bloggers at a venue (which ranged from swanky hotels, to nice restaurants to a bloggers’ living room) thus enabling conversation about the brand (and hopeful advocacy) and building relationships.

After that it was quite simple. Social media is all about relationships and that’s what we wanted to continue to build on.

The third part of our entrée into social media was the launching of the Graco corporate blog. We wanted to participate in the online conversation. It was important for Graco to have a voice and have an opportunity to introduce ourselves and highlight the fact that we (the employees of Graco and the contributors to the blog) are parents too. “We get you, we’re in this parenthood journey together” and that voice (the one of a parent’s) is the voice you’ll hear most frequently at the blog.

Of course, we’ll throw in an occasional post about a new product or program launch and we’ll talk about what it’s like behind the scenes at Graco, but what you’ll hear most about is tales of toddlerhood from our Commercialization Manager, Melissa Parlaman, or what happens when toddlers turn teen from Jon DeHart of the Car Seat Product Marketing team or Parent’s Dirty Little Secrets from Kim Lefko, Vice President of the Global Brand team – I’m even willing to share the fact that my potty-training 3 year old son has very poor aim which is evident in close inspection of the shower curtain, bath mat or wallpaper.

And that’s how we’re connecting with bloggers and online influencers, our readers, our consumers, our friends and even our fellow employees.

So when people ask about our strategy and perhaps hope to take away some pointers on how they might get started, I almost feel guilty telling them to simply: “Keep it real, be authentic and be fully engaged.”

Learn more about Lindsay Lebresco: