Blogging is good for business, says tech evangelist

Robert Scoble, a straight-talking Microsoft employee, believes corporate weblogs offer customers more feedback, writes Karlin Lillington.

Robert Scoble is a tech evangelist with a difference. On his widely-read weblog Scobleizer (http://scobleizer.wordpress.com), his employer, Microsoft, can come in for very public criticism as well as praise, and he doesn't mince words.

Indeed, words in the Scoble world are not for mincing but for relishing and using profusely, often in a dozen scattergun entries daily on his weblog, or perhaps one longer essay on a favourite topic - such as why competitors Google or Yahoo are outrunning Microsoft in this area or that, or vice versa.

For example, he recently posted to readers of his weblog: "By the way, if you guys think that Google is building a portal you're smoking good crack. Why are they causing disruptions across the world? Because they aren't copying either Microsoft or Yahoo." Ouch!

On the other hand, he is just as likely to explain why he loves working at Microsoft - having a job that lets him walk around meeting smart people to discuss technology and life in general is one reason, he noted recently on Scobleizer. Then, in the next instant, he sets himself a challenge to not mention his favourite corporate topics, Google, Yahoo or Microsoft ("GYM") in his next 100 weblog posts, instead linking to other websites, companies and weblogs - including the competition.

Doesn't his employer get a bit perturbed by his bluntness? "Generally at Microsoft, we have a good culture of listening to contrary opinions," he says, speaking by phone from his office at Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, headquarters.

He feels that discussing the pros and cons of his own company, as well as the competition, raises a healthy challenge to Microsoft employees, but is also central to his role as a corporate blogger - offering straightforward personal opinions, not thinly disguised advertisements for Microsoft. It is an approach that brings him criticism from some quarters but also a high profile in the technology world.

Corporate blogging (along with blogging in general) is an abiding passion that has resulted in his new book on the subject, Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers, co-written with Shel Israel. Scoble will be speaking on the subject in Cork on November 30th, as a keynote speaker at the IT Cork conference (www.itcork.ie). He will also address members of the Irish .NET Developers' Alliance in Dublin the next evening.

Ask him why businesses should care about blogging and he says: "Google".

The algorithm that lies behind the Google search engine - also used by Microsoft's MSN and Yahoo in their search engines - gives priority to sites linked top by others, because people tend to link to sites they find authoritative.

Linking is central to blogging, whether the links are part of a particular post, guiding the reader to a site under discussion by the blog author, or listed as part of a "blogroll", a list that is often a central part of a blog, comprising links to other blogs.

People are far more likely to link to changing, lively sites such as blogs, rather than static websites, a fact that means weblogs often come out at the top of searches. And that's why businesses should consider blogging - because if someone is looking for something your company does, and enters that something into a search engine, a good corporate blog can push the site to the top of search engine returns.

Having a weblog also enables a business to talk directly to (and more importantly, with) customers, in a way that Scoble sees as more valuable than advertising. "Advertising will only take you so far," he says.

Write an authoritative weblog, though, and people will start to link to it. If the audience you are talking with is authoritative, the mere act of linking will drive greater readership. It can also be an endorsement for the company and create a good buzz for its products or services. This public relationship angle is the first reason why businesses should blog, Scoble says.

The second reason is that "a goal of businesses should be to encourage and enable evangelistic behaviour in your customers," says Scoble.

"If you can get customers to talk about you and say good things, you'll get a lot of scale."

It isn't easy - customers need to feel they know the company well, and have been given deep insights into it, at which point they hopefully get excited about the company and its business and enjoy advocating it to others.

The third reason for corporate blogging is: "when you actually start listening, when you put up a post and get a thousand comments".

This happens regularly to Microsoft's corporate bloggers, of which there are 1,300, mostly developers, working on products. One blog by a member of the internet explorer team will often have a thousand comments in reply to a single post, says Scoble.

"Then, you get the feedback you can't get any other way, and our customers really love it too."

Scobleizer seems to fit the third category, which is why he argues that his bluntness and criticisms of Microsoft open a door to Microsoft customers.

"It encourages people who might not otherwise talk to us, to tell us where we're screwing up.

"Number one, it shows we're listening. And when you link like that [ with customers], we can have a conversation that leads to a productive discussion, instead of just throwing insults."

You might think such engagement with the public is the main role of a tech evangelist, but Scoble says the primary part of the job is evangelising inside the company, not outside of it.

"An evangelist's role inside a company is to help software developers build software . . . A good evangelist is really a good listener. But then, a good blogger is really a good listener," he says, and the conversation comes full circle.