by Don Peppers -One-to-One Marketing Guru

We think corporate blogging is definitely something worth talking about.

The essence of corporate blogging, of course, is building and reinforcing a community. Aside from the technology aspects, which wouldn’t be very interesting subject matter, there are a number of business-oriented issues that Martha or I (or both of us) could address, such as engagement, loyalty, trust, authenticity, and customer advocacy. Blogging has many different benefits for a company.

• Strengthening your customer relationships
• Emphasizing the “community of interest” you have with customers and other constituencies
• Building your brand in general
• Differentiating yourself from competitors
• Generating leads
• Providing a forum for more direct communications
• Increasing your visibility to the search engines
• Positioning your firm (or the specific blogger) as an expert
• Gaining ideas for innovations and new products or services

Blogging is not the only technology-facilitated trend you should pay attention to, however. Increasingly, for instance, customers are taking it upon themselves to rate and evaluate the businesses they deal with.

Violate a customer’s trust today and you’ll be outed in front of millions. And you can’t un-Google yourself.

Don’t know if you saw this article, but click on this link. If it’s still available to non-subscribers, you’ll see a Wall Street Journal article about a new Web site that allows entrepreneurs to rate the VC folks who invest (or consider investing) in them. This is, of course, just the very teeny tippy top of the iceberg. We’re going to see a LOT more of that, and soon.

Also, if you followed the JetBlue Valentine’s Day ice storm service disaster (remember when they had to cancel a thousand flights over a four day period, infuriating thousands of customers?), well on non-corporate blogs like Church of the Customer and other places, the people who came to JetBlue’s rescue were its most loyal customers, who believed that the company meant well, and wanted other people to give it a second chance. All your clients should pray that their own customers would do that for them!

In the end, there is a LOT TO TALK ABOUT on this subject.

For more information on Don Peppers, please contact Speakers’ Spotlight.

Tags: building trust, corporate blogging, Don Peppers, keynote speaker, Public Relations, relationships, strategic communications