John Cass: Hi, I’m John Cass and welcome to the Authority Marketing Roadmap. I’m here with John McDougall and today we’re going to be interviewing our guest, who is Jim Cahill, chief blogger and head of social marketing for Emerson Process Management in Austin, Texas. The Emerson Process Experts blog was named BtoB magazine’s Best Blog for 2010. Welcome Jim.
Jim Cahill: Thank you very much for having me John and John.
John: We’ve known one another for actually almost 10 years because I believe that you got involved maybe in the corporate blogging survey I did 10 years ago and certainly the blogging success survey that I did eight years ago. I really appreciate the work that you did then with me for great case studies. Perhaps you could go a little bit into your back story at Emerson. How did you come to do blogging there?
Blogging at Emerson
Jim: The story goes back probably into the early ’90s. I was part of our systems business. We basically make control systems that control industrial processes, stuff that blows through pipes, so think of refineries and petrochemical plants and pharmaceuticals and all of these different types of production facilities.
We ended up joining in with another business unit that provided services to put in these control systems and measurement devices and all sorts of things. I was the marketing communications manager for the systems business.
I had a challenge of “how do I talk about our people and their expertise and everything?” At that time, in the ’90s, blogs were starting to become out there and they were nice in that you could tell stories, use more of a natural voice, as opposed to a very marketing-speak voice that we were using at the time.
That was the initial foray. I started an Emerson Process Experts blog and I’m still doing it to this day. The charter is really to tell stories about the experts that we have across our business units and the things they are doing working with our technologies and their expertise to help solve problems for our customers.
John: I also recall, were you not also building an influencer program with some of the journalists in the industry as well? Did that blog help with that process?
Jim: Yes, very much so because at the time and even today, it’s a smaller circle of people that talk about things like these, control systems and automating these plants and everything about it. Obviously, members of the trade press looking at it from an industry perspective or a technology perspective and area, and me as a blogger.
So, I would follow the things they were writing about, they would follow what I was writing about, and it would open up opportunities. As I talked about some of our experts, it would fit into some of the stories they were working on. It gave us a chance to build thought leadership in very specific areas that we had expertise.
John: How successful has the program been?
Jim: Very, and in quite a number of areas we’re seen as the industry leader. It’s interesting, what it did back then still works today. In fact, yesterday one of our people that’s very steeped in the knowledge of nanotechnology and how it’s being applied in our space, we did a post yesterday in 15 minutes.
An editor out of the United Kingdom sent me an email and said “Hey, I’m working on a story for an issue later in the spring. I just saw this in my RSS feed. Can I talk to your expert, build out the story a little bit more?” It continues to work.
The blog is now eight years old and what it’s done is built these relationships where it’s not just through my blog anymore, it’s that the people in the various areas of the trade press know who our experts are and go to them directly through LinkedIn, through email, through whatever else, and then we work it from there. It’s been very successful for us.
Community Monitoring and Marketing
John: I remember that you told me that you’d learned a lot from monitoring the community. How does listening affect your knowledge of what’s happening in the community and why do you think that’s helpful in being a marketer?
Jim: Listening is fundamental for me in getting ideas of things to talk about from the blog. But more and more as you look at what’s become available over the last couple years, primarily LinkedIn for us. I strongly encourage our experts to make sure they are in LinkedIn, that their profile’s very professional.
That they use their LinkedIn status to share interesting articles they come across, “link in” with different people there, join a couple key groups in their area of specialization. And use it as their communications tool, to reach the people who are interested in what they have to say.
What started out as me and the blog, and then other people who were doing that, now spread out through communities and very broadly things like very specialized LinkedIn groups and other areas.
Blogging and Lead Generation
John: That’s interesting. I remember you had said that the blog generates leads. Does it still do that, and how do they come in, and how has the lead flow changed over the years?
Jim: Yeah, it’s still a big source of what we have. But now, as we look across our total social landscape, people find different blog posts through Google searches and other things. Or they may ask a question on a Facebook group that we have, on one of our brands or something else.
If you look at the total landscape, we have different people making inquiries, which many turn into sales leads. We’re a very complex business with different sales channels and everything else. We really have a clearing house group that, for my blog, I can feed in inquiries from Facebook.
We have a team of people that are listening that can feed in inquiries. They get it into the hands of the right sales organization to act upon that and then go back and close the loop and see, “was contact made? Is it in the sales process?” From when we talked last, it’s gotten more sophisticated with a lot more infrastructure around it.
John: Is that infrastructure in such a way where you’re only looking at channels that the company has, or are you looking beyond that way, you’re doing searches? How does that work? Is it just on the company channels…
Jim: We are looking on the company channels. Also, we have social relationship management software where we’re looking at key terms going on. For instance, when you’re in the world of process automation, energy-efficiency is a big deal. We are looking at various terms around that, who is talking about it, where, tradecrafts or competition, other people.
We’re monitoring those kind of things, looking for opportunities to intersect some of our experts into the conversation or identify sales opportunities or local sales people to pursue. That whole aspect of listening and listening beyond our brands and our properties is a big thing.
John: Why do you think the program has been so successful over the years?
Jim: I think it’s just a natural outgrowth. If you look at marketing in general, it’s turning so digital from even 10 years ago. If you looked at the marketing and the communications mix, a lot of it was very print specific and other things. That’s moved to digital and social, just that extension of it.
The thing it does very well that seems better than anything else is shrinking that distance between the people with the expertise and the people seeking expertise. The more we get our experts out, whether it’s through blog posts, or LinkedIn participation in the various areas, or whatever else, we’re shrinking that distance and helping our sales process by identifying these opportunities and getting them into our sales process.
John: How does an expert get into the program? Is it the situation where somebody comes to you and says “Hey, I want to be an expert. Can you put in your program and start helping me?” Or do you go to people in the company? How does the whole process work?
Jim: We have experts in every area. I think it’s more selling the idea, getting their knowledge out there, and making it more findable benefits them in many ways. One, if their services are billable, if they’re a consultant, using these channels, getting their expertise out there markets their capabilities a lot better and opens up those opportunities. Some people recognize that building their personal brand, that’s important.
Then, other things. Some people are just not as comfortable doing it. Having conduits like me through my blog or other people through some of the communities we participate in, it’s almost like having someone that is comfortable as a hub, and spokes out to these experts that are less comfortable with doing it directly.
We’ve tried different things over the years, tried to find things, but overall grow the footprint of our experts out there.
Gaining Authority in the General Marketing Industry
John: Can you bring me up to date where you are with the community? Because I often think of you gaining authority in the community by constantly supporting the community. What would you recommend to your colleagues in the general marketing industry if they were starting out in social and community? How would they gain authority?
Jim: First, I would say don’t underestimate the difficulty in getting one started. They’re scattered, they’re far‑flung, they’re all over the place. Communities sprout up in different areas, like LinkedIn groups I consider a community around some kind of topic, or even a Facebook page or something else.
What we did personally was, about three years ago – we have annual customer events. It’s all about knowledge‑sharing, bringing together over 3,000 people, a lot of customers, a lot of our subject matter experts, all together for a one week event out of the year.
We thought it would be a good idea if we extended that. Instead of just knowledge‑sharing around all these technologies, we have one week out of the year to start an online community, branded the same as the event. That way, it’s 24/7, it’s global. That’s been going three years now. It has started to take off in many areas.
If I were offering advice, one of the most difficult types of communities to get going is a peer-to-peer knowledge-sharing community. A support community is a much easier thing, because if you say, “This is an area we have experts ready to contribute,” you can do that.
When it’s more of a peer-to-peer sharing, it’s much more voluntary. It just takes more time and patience to build up and get going.
John: That reminds me of Amy Jo Kim’s book, “Building Online Community,” from 2001, I think [Editor: “Community Building on the Web : Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities,” Amy Jo Kim, Peachpit Press, 2000]. There was a great example in there of the process of building an online community from newbie to elder and so forth. Do you use some of those, maybe not the same techniques or strategies, but do you use something similar in helping new people in and keeping the conversation going?
Jim: Yeah. We have a dedicated community manager, and then across our various business units we have some focal points in there. Part of the role of the community manager is welcoming in new people, it’s applauding the people that are participating. We recognize them at the event, some of our top people who participate.
Just as it reaches critical mass, we make sure that, as people are providing answers, to recognize them, thank them very much for doing that. In other areas of the community, maybe where things aren’t going as much, we’re encouraging our subject matter experts to participate by sharing some of the things that they’re talking about with customers and problems they’re solving.
All that takes people and some energy to get people in there and contributing to it, but it’s a great thing. Once it reaches critical mass and people are naturally asking and answering questions, it’s a great thing.
John: Yeah, priming the pump. Then, once you’ve got the community to the right level, it’s amazing once they start to tumble along without you having to be there, in a way.
Impacts on SEO & Social
John McDougall: Jim, this is John McDougall. I’m curious, one, if you’re working systematically on SEO, or if that’s just happened naturally because of all the great content. Or are you very specific about picking key words and a lot of that essential SEO stuff that sometimes bloggers do and sometimes they don’t?
What is the influence, have you seen a relationship, because you’re doing so great with blogging, not only has that lifted your SEO ranks, but is there some impact that you’ve seen, by having community and so much social, on your SEO specifically?
Jim: Yeah. I know we’ve got very formal programs around SEO on our website, on making sure they’re as optimized as they can be. From a social standpoint, I’m more looking at it to see “what were the most popular things I’ve been talking about?”.
I’ll go back periodically and look in the analytics and see what were the areas most popular, to use that to guide some of the content in the future. But I don’t do as much about trying to make sure I get these words into the title, into the first, you know, some of the other things, because I just want it to be more natural.
I more think about it in, especially in our industry, we’ve got a lot of people that are reaching the retirement age, a lot of Boomers out there, Millennials coming in to fill their place. So I think about, content-wise, what can I do that’s educational for some of the newer folks that are coming in?
Because the feedback I get and the people that most respond to me seem to be the people coming up to speed with all that. I don’t think about specific words and all that for it.
I just think about, more content-wise, what would I think is valuable to someone coming in learning the ranks, and make sure I’m linking to the educational stuff that we have across our digital space, from communities to websites to different blog posts, or in other areas, Wikipedia and other things. That seems to have worked pretty well over the years for us.
Sharing Blog Posts
John McDougall: Do you have a process when you submit a blog post, when you post it, for reaching out to certain communities and sharing it?
Jim: We have a number of things that are automated. There’s some automated, some manual. What I’ll typically do is, when I do a post, it goes into our community based on the way I’ve categorized it or tagged it. We’ve got a very big community.
If it’s something specific, say like today’s post, “Distillation Column Control,” – based on the way I tagged it, it goes in, an excerpt of it, into that part of the community. Our social relationship management, we schedule it so that a short blurb about it goes into Facebook, into my Twitter feed, into Google Plus, some of the other things in there.
Then, the thing that’s more manual, based on who the subject matter expert I was talking about, I say “Hey,” send him an email, “It’s live. I encourage you and your peers in your group, share this in your LinkedIn status because you’re all connected to our customers, to other people.”
By the time all those, you add them up, a single blog post and then all these other areas, I counted it up for a couple; it may reach 20,000 potential people that may have seen it. Not all click through to the page, but just in a total space. That happens with each post that goes out.
Posting Frequency
John McDougall: What about maybe just a quick tip on thinking, way back when you first got started blogging because I think some of the people listening might not have a whole community set up and be at that level yet. Were you posting blogs every single day when you started? How much are you posting now? Any quick thoughts for corporate blogging, specifically how people can get started?
Jim: When I started the goal back then, because I was half marketing communications manager, half blogger trying to promote our experts in the business there, I was doing it two to three times a week. Now, in a role — I’m leading our efforts across our business units and world areas around social marketing, I’m blogging. I try to do one post a day, every day during the week.
If I was recommending to someone getting started, I’ve seen some reach a reasonable level of success even in every other week. You’re never at great success when you’re on that kind of frequency. I’ve seen some of our technology folks be successful with a once a week blog.
It’s based on what you’re trying to do. In my case, I’m trying to make visible as many of our experts and their expertise and get that out there. I hate to miss a day because the blog’s been around a long time and managed to build up a pretty good audience of folks.
John McDougall: Is this a big part of your marketing now overall as a company?
Jim: It used to be thought of as an island that was out there. Now, it’s getting much more integrated with everything else. As we look about – if there are some key business focus areas, and we have communications plans and campaigns falling out of it, social is very much part of that.
We tried to set up tracking around it. Let’s say we have a series of webinars for onshore oil and gas production. We want to be able to see, “what were the contributions through the emails that were sent out about the event to get people to come, what about through the blog, the various social channels?”
We’re much more sophisticated in the way that we can track, based around campaigns and other things. Yet, there’s still, in there, a bit of a free flow based on the subject, what’s going on, what we’re finding through the listening posts there. I would say it’s much more integrated than it was before, yet there is still flexibility and free-flow based on what we’re listening to and what we find out.
John: Great. Jim, it’s been great to spend a couple of minutes with you again to go over these things. It was great to speak with you again, Jim.
Jim: It’s always a pleasure to catch up with you, John. I really enjoyed our conversation.
John: Tell us how people can get in touch with you.
Jim: I would say that you can either look at my blog which is Emerson Process Experts, or if you Google Jim Cahill, I think my top one is LinkedIn, search result on that. Google Jim Cahill, “link in” with me, and that’s a great start.
John: Great, and check out workingdemosite.com/authority for more interviews and information on Authority Marketing. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. I’m John Cass, and also here with John McDougall. See you next time on the Authority Marketing Roadmap.
