NCR Corporation: Blogs: Changing the Perception from Risk to Reward — Live from BlogWell

Coverage of this session by Sprinklr’s Director of Business Development Chris Kieff. Connect with him by checking out Sprinklr’s blog and by following him on Twitter. Note: Sprinklr is a BlogWell sponsor (and a great one at that!), and NCR is a Sprinklr client.

2:10 — SocialMedia.org’s Erin McDaniel introduces NCR Corporation‘s Director of Design, Digital, & Events, Colleen Swanger.

2:11 — Colleen opens by asking who works with BtoB companies, and most of the audience raises their hands.

2:12 — Colleen: Getting a blog program started in a non-marketing, risk averse organization can be a challenge. But if you’re a Fortune 500 company and you’re not using blogs to talk with your customers, you are missing out.

2:13 — Colleen: Not everyone wants to get their information from Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. A sizable portion of the audience wants to get it from blogs because it’s a familiar format.

2:14 — Colleen describes how important listening is to a social media program.

2:15 — Colleen shares how valuable blogging can be through announcing events, linking to registration, building lead gen lists, and sharing case studies — and to showcase thought leadership and innovation. She also talks about how it can support inbound marketing efforts and SEO.

2:16 — Colleen: But for every reason to blog, there is a reason why you shouldn’t do it: No resources, no time, nobody reads blogs, no management support, long approval processes, or too much risk.

2:17 — Collen says that while those are excellent points, if every other marketing effort doesn’t need senior management sign off, why does a blog?

2:18 — Colleen addresses the common hesitations to launching a blog:

• No resources or time — It’s a simple thing that doesn’t take as much time and effort as some may think. She recommends working blogs into the regular content development process.
• No management support — “You can blog but you have to turn off the comments.” Colleen says it’s a channel they own and control completely, so they can remove troublesome posts.
• Long approval process for content — Colleen recommends creating a new process that bypasses main approvals.
• No one reads blogs anymore, and it’s too risky — Colleen: If our competitors are doing it and being successful (use examples) then we should do it.

2:25 — Colleen: How did we do it? We found someone in senior management who was willing to take responsibility and champion the process.

2:26 — Colleen describes their goals: Regular posting schedule, increase touches over time, list building. Colleen says their blog also sparked the jealousy factor with other departments in the organization. When the first blog launched, many other departments wanted one quickly.

2:27 — Colleen says they avoided the ROI discussion by saying that it’s an experimental program.

2:28 — Colleen says it took longer to launch than anticipated, but that they’ve now been up for a couple of months. They’re promoting it through their internal sales force, on their website, and via Facebook and Twitter. For measurement, they’re looking at frequency of posts, comments and shares, internal feedback, and visitor metrics.

2:29 — Colleen shares her lessons learned:

• Don’t take no for an answer.
• Don’t bully — be persistent but not overbearing.
• Find advocates.
• Forgivness, not permission, is a good way to start.

2:30 — Colleen closes by saying it doesn’t require a big launch with bells and whistles. You can use a soft launch that helps to get it going smoothly.

Q&A

Q: Do you use names, and well-known people?

A: No, we post today anonymously. Due to the regulated nature of financial services, we didn’t want to try with a big name.

Q: Why did blogs come last after Facebook and Twitter?

A: Some people felt that Twitter and Facebook were good for PR so they were easier to start. Blogging felt more risky to the organization so it was more difficult to get started.

Q: Are you doing interactive, multimedia, video, images etc.?

A: We are working to start and want to add more video, images etc. We’re hearing from customers who want to see more of the “behind the scenes” stuff from the organization.

Q: Do you have plans to expand the blog to open it up to more employees and other topics beyond the initial launch of product-centric topics?

A: Yes absolutely, we’re going to let the audience take us where they want us to go.

Q: How do you moderate questions and comments in a regulated industry?

A: We have a communications tree with SME’s that we can get answers to any questions which are challenging in the regulated area.

Q: How do you determine what your blog readers want to know?

A: We use other channels like, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. and ask questions there to find out what people want to know. We also crowdsource internally for content ideas.

Q: What types of technology do you use?

A: We use WordPress, Lithium, and CoTweet.