TamTamy Blog

Corporate blogs are one of the possible meeting points between companies and their customers. We have seen some cases in which such a tool has certainly had very positive effects and has strengthened the relationship between the enterprise and its readers or the brand fans.

But despite this, a recent analysis has shown that most consumers trust the suggestions from corporate blogs only to a very limited degree, which reaches only 16%.
How come?

We have already given an explanation to this in previous posts, but it is important to underline it once more.
Putting yourselves in your customers’ shoes, whom would you trust more, between the unbiased advice of a friend and the suggestions (possibly partial) of a company which is trying to sell its brand in the best way?

The answer is obvious, and the data obtained from the answers of the analyzed sample show that 77% place their trust in the advice they get via email from someone known, followed by online consumers’ ratings (60%), results of search engines (50%), Yellow Pages (48%), print newspapers (46%), friends’ pages in Social Networks, and company blogs in last position.

How can a company win its customers’ trust then, and see that they are not hostile? The keywords are always the same: transparency and practicality.

If the company decides to offer a useful service to its readers through the blog, rather than using it only as a means of advertising to publicize its products, this purpose will surely be perceived and the dialogue will begin. As we have already mentioned, this dialogue requires some effort from both sides, but particularly from the company, which will be available to the citizens to answer their questions and help them overcome possible problems and doubts concerning the brand.

The blog, besides being a way to convey information to the audience, must be first of all a valid support to the customer, without forgetting that every comment expressed by a consumer is an occasion to improve your service and widen the group of your devoted.

As in any healthy relationship, both sides can benefit from a sincere communication.

This video by Johnny Kelly synthesizes the concept of Cloud Seeding. For the web, this idea means seeding the Net, and Social Media in particular, with new contents that can awaken the audience’s attention and creativity in an innovative way, so that new ideas and concepts can be born that are different from the ones we have quickly grown accustomed to seeing.

This expression is taken from the scientific term, where Cloud Seeding refers to the actions that lead to climate changes due to the dispersion in the atmosphere of substances forming clouds and ice nuclei which alter the microphysical processes within the cloud.

If taken to the web, this meaning is very appropriate as well.
How can companies spread their ideas in the web in their turn? How can they start the new evolutions of communication, but also of production? It is difficult to say, but all this can happen following the same technique, that is, taking from the net as much information as possible and transforming it into little or big revolutions.

In these past weeks we have spoken a lot about social networks and how they can be useful to companies to get deeper into the social environment and create relationships with consumers, partners and potential customers.

The communication of a brand, though, cannot be carried out exclusively through “social” means. These are certainly useful to consolidate it, to make it known and to fidelize people. But in order to create word of mouth and let people remember the brand, it is fundamental that there is a work of communication behind, operating in different areas.

The agency Nodpol+ Hamburg, for example, has realized a beautiful video for Asics to present the brand: it is called “Origami In the Pursuit of Perfection”, and you can view it up here.
The history of the Japanese multinational company which produces worldwide famous shoes is told through the stop motion technique in which, with a perfect Japanese style, an origami takes on different forms going back to the first moments and through all the steps that have taken Asics to today’s success.

From the idea that switched on the bulb in the founder’s brains, giving birth to the first trainer, to the final question “What will be the next idea?”, the pursuit of perfection never stops, as the title of the video, not by chance, suggests.

After talking about Blellow, it is right to mention another microblogging service meant for business, but in this case addressed mainly to companies and organizations: Yammer.

Awarded by Techcrunch as best start-up of 2008, Yammer is very similar to Twitter, but with a different mission and a more structured business model.

Just like its predecessor and, even more, like the microblog we presented yesterday, the mechanism is still based on the frequency of updates by the users who, in this case, answer the question “What are you working on?”.

When a new user answers the question, a feed is created that is passed on to the colleagues who are subscribers, with whom it is possible to exchange opinions and answer problems using the usual system that we all know by now thanks to Twitter.

For every profile it is possible to insert information and details on your professional carrier, the projects you are working on, telephone contacts, etc.
In a way, Yammer replaces the company’s intranet and is similar to a wiki for problem solving or to have an easier communication, when it is not possible to use tools such as Skype, where the communication is not addressed to everybody but rather to a limited number of people, chosen by the user.

Paying a further monthly fee of $1 for every employee, the companies which have decided to adopt it can use a series of extra services such as the control of users, the cancellation of subscriptions and messages, the inclusion of the company’s brand, and above all the creation of a network reserved only to the employees through the authorization of specific IP addresses. This is exactly what the business model of social networks (designed by the same creators of Geni) is based upon, which would otherwise be completely free and with no income.

Yammer is available also as widget desktop and for iPhone and the more popular Blackberry, at least in the Italian business world. Its success is decreasing compared to when it was launched, when a lot of companies took part at once, reaching the number of 2.000 organizations and more than 10.000 users, but it is still quite a populous community.

A new social network for the business world has just been created. It is Blellow, a microblogging system similar to Twitter which, instead of asking its users the general question “What are you doing?”, asks “What are you working on?”

Although it is addressed mainly to freelancers, Blellow can easily be used also by companies. Its objective is to help people solve problems connected to their work with the collaboration of other users.

Through the creation of groups or, even better, by navigating in them or in the social network in general, companies can use the database of professionals it contains for recruiting.
It is a system that, in a way, is similar to the valid and reliable LinkedIn which is now, in my opinion, still one of the most useful and effective networks for business.

Together with this, just as it happens on Twitter, Blellow is used as a support when you have a problem working on a project. The number of users in the community can answer and help anybody who has already build his or her own network of contacts.

Finally, it is possible to post jobs, that is, create a sort of announcement with an optional sum offered, as in this case.
As I said at the beginning of this post, the service is mainly addressed to freelancers and, consequently, the kind of collaborations required usually refers to temporary or occasional jobs and not to open-ended hiring, also because this would change the essence of the project.
Blellow is not meant to be simply a site for job announcements, such as Monster, but rather it is a way to establish a network of professional contacts to interact with or rely on.

But still, once a certain harmony has been created with one or more contacts and their skills have been proved, companies can decide to establish with them a more durable relationship.