My previous post was on the topic of Corporate Blogging Challenges. Among other things, I touched on the notion of a blog by itself being an inadequate or even inappropriate solution for the goal of establishing customer intimacy through conversations.
Rather than type up another long post on the topic, I thought I’d illustrate the issue with a recent example. On July 11th Southwest created a post, titled “Assigned Seating Comments“. The reason for the post was to inform readers that they need to leave comments related to this topic on the original blog post by Southwest’s CEO that was created on June 21st & initiated the conversation. The response from Southwest’s readers to that post was incredible …. and there is a strong desire for a conversation. The conversation started on the post itself, but as time passed by and the topic stayed hot on traditional news outlets, readers were leaving comments on other posts on Southwest’s blog that had nothing to do with the topic of assigned seating.
If you read the initial assigned seating post, the comment thread is extremely long and is now difficult to parse for valuable insight. It is also difficult for readers to follow the dialog and continue to contribute in a threaded manner (i.e. building on previous points and comments, which are not necessarily related to the most recent comment posted).
What makes this worse is that readers are indeed still eager to comment on the topic, which remains hot (thanks to news outlets everywhere & Southwest’s own experimenting with assigned seating). Yet, these potential contributors may not be aware of or are unable to find the original post. Hence, Southwest’s reminder post. Clearly some are are leaving comments across the blog; others are just not posting comments. How do you find and parse these scattered conversations? How do you contribute & build on comments you cannot find as a reader?
This example demonstrates the value of Web 2.0 capabilities such as blogging and the value of online conversations with your customers. Southwest is leading the charge in allowing the conversations to start and in demonstrating the latent demand for customers to converse and the value contained in their comments.
It also demonstrates that companies are going to need a much more robust platform than a standard blog to truly accomplish their customer intimacy and conversations goals in a way where they can efficiently foster these conversations, effectively identify actionable insights, and create tangible positive results.
What a wonderful example of the value of Web 2.0 for companies, and also a reminder that it is very early and we have a long way to go.
– brian
