Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

The Business of Blogging: the Good, Bad and the Wonderful

Pranam KolariPh.D. Candidate, UMBC

CAS Ph.D. Fellow, IBM Toronto

Tim Finin, Yelena Yesha, UMBCKelly Lyons, Stephen Perelgut, Jen Hawkins, IBM Toronto

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Blogs have shown astounding growth

• 50,000,000 Weblogs (July 2006)• Doubling in size every 6 months for the past 3 years

Source: Technorati State of the Blogosphere Report (http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000436.html)

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Blogs are a global phenomenon

Source: Technorati State of the Blogosphere Report (http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000436.html)

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Blogs continue to capture user interest

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Enterprises – the Good

• Unlike other forms of communication blog posts are public – and now constitute the ‘influential’ social media

• So what’s in it for business? Lets take the case of IBM

• the Good – Buzz Monitoring– Marketing Feedback– Public Relations Monitoring– Competitive Intelligence

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Buzz Monitoring – Word Of Mouth

IBM Chip Clocks 500 GHz

PC celebrates 25 years

IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad goes in flames

PHP Integration Kit for J2EE WAS

• “Name” mentions guide branding strategies

• Product mentions guide product and

feature releases

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Opinion Mining

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Marketing Feedback

• BPM/BAM• SOA Videos• “Launch” movie

• IBM launched their SOA campaign in September/October

• Effectiveness of marketing campaigns through blogs

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Marketing Feedback

• WallstreetTech – “Check out this ‘trailer’ for the launch of SOA from IBM - advertising may never be the same again.”

• eBizQ – “Check out this fun "movie preview" from IBM about their new SOA product launch next week.”

• …

• Monitor blogs that mention IBM

and SOA• Follow pulse, and tune strategies

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Public Relations Management

• Monitor “direct to consumer” products – like (Lenovo/IBM)ThinkPad, Lotus etc.

“… passersby stared aghast or fled crying terrorist, the ThinkPad (which was quoted to be an IBM, not a Lenovo) apparently had a number of

death throes as the fire went through various phases, until eventually”“I love my ThinkPad, which I got inexpensively off of IBM's refurb site.”“Does Lotus Notes Mean Career Suicide?.”• Monitor initiatives – e.g. IBM

academic/university relations“found some famous companies such as IBM, Intel and Micron in the fair

… Good, this means opportunities … this university is really small so not

many students in the gathering; I never saw a line except … (for) IBM ”

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Competitive Intelligence

• Analyze what (good, bad) makes your competitor buzzy

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Players in this space

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Enterprises – the Bad

• What’s in it for us?

• the Bad– Public Relation Problems– Competitive Intelligence– Compulsion to Blog– Updating Blogs– Computational Issues

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

The Dell PR Episode

• Jeff Jarvis with Dell – Summer of 2005

• June 21, 2005 – “Dell lies. Dell sucks.”

• Almost all entries went with – “Is someone at Dell listening…”. Everyone except Dell were listening!

• Ended with escalation to Chief Marketing Officer, Dell’s PR department now monitors Blogs

• Listen to your customers.

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Competitive Intelligence

• Your competitors know why you are good, and bad• Be proactive, mine for intelligence

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Blogger Limitations

• Blogs do not cover all demographics

• Mining blogs work best in “direct to consumer” products/services

• Blogger attrition is high• Don’t post on compulsion

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Computational Limitations

• Tools are not yet mature• Visualizations still locked into the inertia

of traditional web search engines• Sentiment Analysis for automatic opinion

extraction still in early research stages• Spam Blogs skew blog analytics

– E.g. navigate through blog search results for “IBM laser printer” on a popular blog search engine

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Enterprises – the Wonderful

• What’s in it for us?

• the Wonderful– Business reaches out to consumer

• Engage In Conversations

• Influence Discussions

– Use Blogs among employees (internally)• Identify Thought Leaders

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Engage In Conversations

• People blog to be heard

• Be the first to address consumer issues– Comment and clarify on consumer blog– Request personal communication

• Be the first to acknowledge consumer raves– WOMM marketing– “Acknowledgement” is important

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Engage In Conversations• My post wasn’t negative, but all subsequent references from me were positive

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Employee Blogs Generate Buzz

• Employee Blogs hosted (and endorsed) by the enterprise– Product Information and Updates– Feature Feedback– Typically authored by CEO/CFO, Dept Head,

Architects

• Employee Blogs acknowledged by the enterprise– bridge enterprise with the blogosphere

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Influence Discussions – Generate Buzz

• Employee blogs generate interest in IBM’s SOA Launch Video, then picked up by the blogosphere

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Use Internal Blogs

• Blogs hosted internally by an enterprise– Fosters collaboration– Identify experts– Community dynamics– Bottom-up initiatives– Project Blogs

• At IBM – “HackDay” an IBM wide event, developed

through initiation on a blog

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Internal Blogs – Collaboration

• IBM has around 2000 active internal blogs• Conversations extend across geographies• Dialogue leads to collaboration

us ca jp uk nl

us 164 50 4 47 10

ca 44 100 12 22 15

jp 4 1 100 - -

uk 52 24 - 66 15

nl 14 8 - 16 --

POST

COMMENT

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Internal Blogs – Buzz/Experts

•Rank blog postings by employees • Employee concerns• Internal Product

Feedback

•Mine tag usage •Who are the experts?

Screen-shots deleted in this version

Screen-shots deleted in thisversion

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Internal Blogs - Elsewhere

• Google, Yahoo, Ask– Product releases

• Microsoft

• Sun– Employee blogs, not well structured

• Adobe– Feature feedback

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Trends for the future

• Blogs within the Enterprise will only grow– New tools for internal blogging– Ways of connecting blogs with other

collaboration tools

• External Blogs– Bridge blogs will grow in popularity– Competitive Intelligence will find mainstream

use and be open

Pranam Kolari The Business of Blogging: CASCON 2006 Workshop Oct 19, 2006

Thanks!