John McDougall: Hi. I’m John McDougall. I’m here today with John Cass. We’re going to be talking about “Corporate Blogging for Trust and Authority.” So John, what’s your experience with corporate blogging?
John Cass: Well, John, I’ve been involved in corporate blogging probably since 2003. I’ve actually been blogging since 2003. When I first started, I was really curious to know “what is this thing, blogging, and how was it useful to business?”
And so, I start exploring that. And being a marketer, I started looking at how blogging was being used by various companies. And then, I started to actually use blogging in my profession. So, I actually started probably the first Web log testing blog in the industry when I was working for a company. I was working at Quotium in 2004.
Then, I also did a survey in 2004 on the first corporate blogging survey, which turned into the second corporate blogging survey in 2005, which involved interviewing about six major companies, and then, asking questions in the survey of about 100 companies and getting facts on that, and producing a document, and also a website about the value of corporate blogging and the state of corporate blogging in 2005.
I’ve also been the Community Manager at Forrester Research, where I managed all of the analysts and gave them advice about how to blog, which was certainly interesting because some of them were actually analysts that talked about corporate blogging.
I’ve also managed a number of different corporate blogs, such as when I was at SDL and worked with various clients in advising. So actually, back in 2005 and 2006, I was Director of Blogging Strategies at a company called “Backbone Media.” There, we actually built a corporate blogging practice by analyzing the different blogs in a marketplace for a client, and then figuring out a strategy for them, and then implementing it for them.
John McDougall: And so, where did your book fit into that one? When did you write your book on blogging?
John Cass: I wrote my book on blogging, “Strategies and Tools for Corporate Blogging” in 2007. That was published by Butterworth–Heinemann. That book came out of my blog actually. I got approached by the publisher. They said, “Hey! We’d be interested in having you write a book about corporate blogging.”
And so, I did. And a lot of the content was derived from the blog post that I wrote, also the corporate blogging survey. And also, another survey I did with Dr. Walter Carl at Northeastern University on “Corporate Blogging Business Success Factors” as well.
John McDougall: Interesting. So, it’s pretty safe to say you have a lot of experience with corporate blogging, specifically.
John Cass: Yes. Yes. I’ve been interested in it, specifically on the topic of “How Large Companies Use Corporate Blogs.” I was involved in a survey of particular corporate blogs where we looked at the number of corporate blogs in the Fortune 500 over a number of years, and then did a review of those corporate blogs either by having bloggers just do a review of the blog and write their opinion on their own blogs, and then linking back to it, or by interviewing the corporate bloggers at the company and getting them to give feedback about their particular blog.
The reason we ended up doing that was that I wrote a review of General Motors, which I think was quite interesting. But there wasn’t a peep out of it just because I think it was a critique. I think some people were nervous about saying anything. General Motors actually was the first corporate blog in the Fortune 500. There wasn’t a tech blog that was published in 2005.
John McDougall: And so, how does blogging help a firm or a brand build influence, in your opinion?
John Cass: When I think of social media, social media really has two words in it – one is social and the other one is media. Media is really that idea of creating content in some way. And so, content really helps a company because a blog is a mechanism to quickly produce content. And that’s great.
You can also produce the type of content on a blog that is less rigid, if you will, on a traditional corporate Web site, and a little bit more informal, and a little bit more lighthearted even, sometimes. So, you’re able to produce a lot of content. You can produce the content in a way that it’s probably more appropriate. You’re able to produce content that answers a lot of customer’s questions within that realm.
The other aspect of social media is social. What social means to me, I think, is that you’re actually able to engage people. So, when I think of a blog, it’s not just about the blog itself, but the power of it is really the fact that that blog is part of a wider community.
A good way to explain that is, if you think of a forum. I think everybody understands that a forum is a community of different people. And they can understand the interactions back and forth. But when you’re looking in an individual blog, you don’t see those interactions immediately because you don’t see all the other blogs in the blogging community.
So, when you’re looking at a blog, a successful blog is not one that just writes about content, and then, doesn’t do anything else. But rather, it’s a blog that’s engaging with other people in the community, whether that’s through the commenting on their blog, or by running a blog post that answers questions and poses questions for other people in the community on their blogs, or today, also in other social media aspects.
So, I think a company can really be successful by producing a lot of content. That’s the media aspect of social media. Also, by engaging their community either by commenting on other blogs, or by writing corporate blogging content, that social content that answers people’s questions and connects with other people in the community.
There’s one other aspect of media, which is, it’s the traditional way that we think of it that you have that ability, at least, from a PR perspective, to get publicity within that community. And so, I think it’s interesting from a media perspective that a corporate blog actually gives you the ability to connect with those influencers. So, it’s not just about the mechanism of engaging customers and also influencers, but the ability to build authority by building relationships with those influencers.
John McDougall: Yes. I think one of the things that make social media a little weak to me at times is when people just use it to broadcast content. It’s certainly great to do that. That’s a huge part of it, to be influential by having something to say. But if you just are on a soapbox and it’s a monologue, that’s not very social.
John Cass: You’re right. It isn’t. There has to be some sort of discussion there. And I think, when you’re writing content — It’s certainly okay to write a great piece and a good quality piece, but sometimes, the best pieces that I write are because there’s a foil out there. Somebody’s written something, and I’m enthusiastic about it. And I can write a thousand-word blog post just because I know immediately what I need to write. And I can just churn it out very quickly. And it’s going to be a lot better because there’s this counterpoint out there – that’s much more fun.
John McDougall: Yes. You’re joining a conversation with your post and your comments and your tweets, not just pumping out content and again, getting on your soapbox.
John Cass: Exactly. Yes. Yes. I agree.
John McDougall: How has business blogging changed over the years? You’re coming from blogging way back in 2004, and maybe, a little bit of the background of when business blogging first started.
John Cass: Sure, well, blogs started in ’98, ’99. I think the first corporate blogs started around about 2000. One of the first ones was at a Microsoft, and it was basically a blog – partly, some of the engineers there and developers started blogging because it was a reaction to the bashing that was happening to Microsoft by some of the people in the community, the customers, if you will, developers.
John McDougall: Really? [laughs]
John Cass: Yes. That’s right [laughs]. Microsoft. Well, we all remember those days, the court case. Things have changed a little bit. So, that was the start of it. In some ways, you had a lot of startups that we’re using blogs as well.
Mainly, the people that built blogging platforms, the developers, that’s where it all really started off. So, in the early days, probably the first five years or so, 2000 to 2005, you had rather a quick maturity level where you had most of the major corporations like IBM and Oracle, eventually Adobe but who started off as Macromedia, mainly under the tutelage of Jeremy Allaire, who’s now at Bright Cove here in Boston.
Basically, the technology bloggers were mature by 2005, which is really interesting. And it’s because of who their customers were. And you know, it made a lot of sense. They were reading blogs. They were using blogs. They were building blogs. So, it was all tapped by then, if you will.
And then after 2005, and it’s not to say that you didn’t have other companies that didn’t blog but before then; but really, I think 2005, and actually, really, the 2004 election; I think we all remember the blogosphere and the bloggers’ coming out, and the reason why they appeared on the scene was because of search engine optimization, where you have that community. You could have 20 bloggers, who’ll be talking on a topic, and they’d swamp the search engine results.
That’s partly the reason why the blogosphere erupted on to the scene because you had enough synergy in numbers there to stop swamping those results. And so after 2005, you saw more larger corporations coming in.
General Motors was the first major Fortune 500 company outside the tech center to start blogging. 2008 or 2007 was Ford. And I think after that period, you had more changes in the community, but you also had the adoption of social media.
So, to a certain extent, blogging didn’t take a backseat. I think it was still growing, but the recognition in the community about its importance lessened a little bit overtime. And I would say that, especially after the 2008 election, social media became even more prominent in the business world.
And so, that was seen as very important. But I’d say, 2010, 2011 actually, with all the changes that are happening with the Google algorithms, that’s actually increased the importance of corporate blogs just because it’s your website, and it’s a place to put your content. And it’s a good mechanism for companies to create a lot of content, and have their own authority and their own voice, that they can pinpoint to on the Web.
So, in some ways, I think we’ve come full circle from those early days – 10, 11 years ago. Part of that is because Google now has an algorithm that’s a little bit more realistic to how the ecosystem of the Web works.
John McDougall: Except sometimes, people blog just because they think — “I have to blog because of SEO, right? We have to,” which is true that you need fresh content. But it doesn’t always make for the best blogs, right? Because sometimes, people just farm out the content and it’s really a bunch of crap, to be honest, sometimes.
John Cass: Yes. Yes. Ghost blogging isn’t good. I think it’s much better if you can have authentic. And we talked a lot about this back in 2003, 2004. There was the “PR Blogging Week” which was a bringing together of a number of PR professionals in 2004 and 2005.
The community came together to talk about this new thing called “Social Media at Large” – we didn’t have the word “social media” then – blogging and how it was going to affect communications and PR and a lot of that conversation.
Then, I hear today the same issues happen – authentic voice and how you build authority, how you build influence in the community, and the issues that we discussed then are just as relevant and even more relevant today. Actually, that’s the nice thing.
John McDougall: Yes. Maybe even more in a way because some of the bloggers that got the most SEO ironically, and then, just have massive followings and huge amount of unique visitors, some of them don’t even think about SEO so much.
I can’t place the title of the book, but I bought a used book on Amazon maybe a few months ago, “Interviews with Top Bloggers.” It’s a great book. I’ll try and append the podcast with that on the blog post.
But basically, some of the bloggers were saying, “SEO, I don’t even think about it. I’m just basically a kick-ass blogger. And because they’re writing really great content from their heart and writing a lot, Google picks up on it, and it gets shared. And it’s really authoritative, whereas certainly it’s not always that way.
You do need to strategize and map out – we’re going to do a certain amount of blog posts and really set a team together to go do it. But you do have to model yourself preferably after those that…SEO is sort of a secondary part of it, but the real content, real transparency, and authentic voice, and legitimate content, is driving it.
And then, you can add all the nice SEO bells and whistles to that. But coming out strictly from an SEO perspective and expecting it to work, and just farming out the content isn’t good. Not to say you can’t farm out content to some degree, if you find really legitimate, good writers. But again, yes, nothing like more authentic, direct people blogging.
John Cass: Yes. I agree with that. I think SEO certainly has a part to play just because it adds clarity. If you figure out what people are searching on, then you understand the language that they’re using and who doesn’t want more of that, bringing clarity to how you speak and write and communicate.
But if you just focus on that, and you lose some of your passion, and not having that engagement, then you’re not going to be successful. As I mentioned before, to have a successful blog, it’s not just about your own blog, but also how you outreach to the rest of the people in the community, and how you engage with them on a regular basis, whether you’re doing that. You’re going to be much more successful.
Getting back to SEO — SEO, to be successful, is really about creating great content. It’s about getting links from authority sites. So, if you speak with everybody else, if you speak with authority, and you have relationships with other influencers in the community, and they’re exchanging ideas with you, either on your blog, or your social network, or on their own blog back and forth, obviously you’re getting links. And here, you get ranking as a result.
John McDougall: Right, whereas if it’s just a corporate blog, where you’re really just checking a box, “Yes, one post a week, two posts a week, or even two posts a day,” if you’re farming it out and it’s just not really the authentic voice of the real experts of the company, but they’re just doing it because the SEO team said, “Oh, check this box,” then it’s not going to be that successful. But what about tools, because HubSpot is an awesome tool that has social and keyword tools all baked into one? But certainly way back, what did you start with, for example, your first blog?
John Cass: I started using Typepad. Typepad came out, I think, in July or August of 2003. I actually had a Blogspot before that in May of 2003. And then, I ended up joining Typepad. So I used that. And then, over the years, I’ve used a lot of WordPress. I think WordPress came out around about the same time, 2003, 2004. And it’s really dominated the industry. Not only is it a blogging platform, but also it’s become a successful content management system for people’s sites.
But I think what’s interesting for corporate blogs is that — I mean, we raise this issue about writing posts, but also how do you introduce authority in that? It’s interesting. There’s a company called Indium, for example, which is in the material industry. They provide advice and services in that area.
One of the things that they do is that they have a senior scientist that blogs on a regular basis. They get tons of questions about the subject. So, one of the things to be not afraid of is to actually bring out personalities and individuals in your own company and have them be recognizable and build a brand. Otherwise, if it’s just “admin” or something, somehow, it’s not going to be the same.
John McDougall: Right, yes. That you have to pick your experts and work them up and if some of them leave your company, so be it. You’ll have to live with that and get some new ones.
John Cass: Yes. I really had that experience at Forrester Research where the analyst there definitely, the big analyst firms, like Gartner and Forrester, they have a cadre of big names, who are famous in that particular field. They’re always turning over. We had a number of people that left in, actually, the internet marketing field. Then we have to deal with that, but we always have somebody else. So, it really doesn’t matter.
John McDougall: Who were some of the key people there at that time?
John Cass: Jeremiah Owyang.
John McDougall: Yes. Yes. He’s fantastic.
John Cass: Yes, and Charlene Li. Charlene Li, when I was there as community manager, she actually left the company, went to form her own analyst from Altimeter Group. Actually, Jeremiah eventually left, and also Ray Wang, who left, who went on to start Constellation Research and a few other people as well.
But those are good examples of how blogging and having a platform like that can really help build authority and influence within the community. If you can assign that to a company and give people enough leeway, you can be successful with it. Actually, Gartner did a good job with that as well.
John McDougall: That’s great. Thanks a lot, John. Thank you everyone for listening to the “Authority Marketing Roadmap Podcast.”
