Corporate ClueTrain

All Aboard! The Cluetrain is traveling to the following stops...

Time to board the ClueTrain

Who's on the train?

There will be talking on the train

Transparency on the train

Rules of the train, per Gillmor

It's a matter of trust

Conversation in everyday life

Conversations lead to community

Jenny Preece rides the ClueTrain

People, Purpose and Policies

Social Capital on the Cluetrain

Where do we go from here?

There is still uncertainty among CEO-types about the value of blogging. Joe Queenan, in an October issue of Chief Executive writes that since there is little monetary value in blogging, a CEO has better things to do with his (or her) time. A recent survey by Burson-Marsteller revealed that only 7% of CEOs surveyed actually blog, though CEOs do see the value in blogs for promoting internal communication and for communicating with external audiences. A recent Harris/PRSA survey "finds that majorities of general consumers, executives and congressional staffers are more likely to think traditional marketing methods are acceptable practices over non- traditional techniques."

An Edelman survey found that employee blogs are more credible than corporate blogs, and bloggers unassociated with a company would prefer to interact with employee bloggers over other company representatives. One of their key findings is that even though 51% of bloggers are blogging about company products, they are not often contacted by that company.

Who else is experimenting with blogs and blogads?

Budget
The Budget Scavenger Hunt includes both blogs and blogads

Business Week Magazine
An article in Folio describes the blogs BW has started in their Tech Beat and Deal Flow sections

Hasbro
Hasbro is using blogads to promote is new 70th edition of Monopoly

Microsoft

The WSJ even has their favorites...

I decided to do my own sleuthing among the top 25 brands, as ranked in the Top 100 Global Brands by InterBrand, thinking that the brands with the most brand equity would be most likely to utilize every channel possible to promote their brands, including blogging or online communities. Out of those top 25 brands, only six had employee blogs and five had pr type customer-focused blogs. Those brands with employee blogs include Microsoft, IBM, GE, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Ford. Notice that five of those six are technical firms. Interesting... The firms with customer blogs include Coca-Cola, Intel, Nokia, Hewlett-Packard, and Cisco.

The remaining question is, will other brands think of blogging and creating online communities as a fad, or will they take it seriously and "get on the cluetrain?"

In taking this class, reading these books and observing the Sun blogs, my goal is to help organizations "get a clue" by understanding how to use blogging as a tool to promote two-way communication with their constituents, ultimately resulting in loyal customers, vibrant online communities, and social capital.

In corporate/pr speak, corporations need to do a better job building relationships with consumers, or their publics, using an authentic voice. In Cluetrain talk, "Loyalty to a company is based on respect. And that respect is based on how the company has conducted itself in conversations with the market. Not conversing, participating, is not an option. If we don't engage people inside and outside our organization in conversation, someone else will. Start talking (p. 73)."

The end result of the conversation will be social capital--loyalty--to the organization. Nan Lin (2001) has written about social capital and defines social capital as “investments in social relations with expected returns in the marketplace (p.19).” He quotes Levi-Strass (1949) when he says that “it is the exchange which counts and not the things exchanged (p. 146).” And, Lin (2001) says, “its motive its to maintain a group or community (p. 148).” He adds that trust is a critical component of those exchange relationships, in that it “reduces the complexity of the world (p. 148).” He also addresses how a firm can utilize its reputation “to mobilize the support of others for both instrumental and expressive actions (p. 150).” Grunig (1993) suggests that a firm “earn a good reputation early, because it is difficult to replace an existing reputation with a new one (p. 135). Grunig (1993) examines the fuzzy concept of image, and suggests that a firm must be concerned with more than just public perception of its image, but must be concerned with the substance of its relationship with its publics, as well. Grunig (1993) correctly identifies that “although it may be difficult for large organizations to communicate personally with all members of their publics, they have means other than the media to communications with publics (p. 123.” When Grunig (1993) wrote this, blogging was not widespread, but today, blogging nicely solves the problem that he identifies that prevents an organization from forming a relationship with its public.

Grunig (1993) differentiates between symbolic and behavioral communication. Symbolic communication is quest for positive images (Grunig, 1993); concerned with what an organization communicates to its publics—one-way communication about its image. He contrasts behavioral communication as a longer-term strategy of building substantive relationships with publics based on: “reciprocity, trust, credibility, mutual legitimacy, openness, mutual satisfaction, and mutual understanding (p. 135).” Creating blogs or online communities have the potential to build all of these attributes with an organization’s publics by sharing information in an authentic voice.
In examining whether or not a company should encourage blogs as a way to communicate with their constituents, the best avenue to build social capital, then, would be the blogs that promote an exchange of information, or work to create a dialogue between the company and its customers, thereby reducing the complexity of the relationship, building one that has greater trust. This is precisely what the communities on the Sun website are doing.

Lin (2001) argues (contrary to Putnam) that social capital in cybernetworks is increasing due to increased access to information and technology as well as the ability of people to reach out across boundaries of time and space. Howard Rheingold (2003) in "Smart Mobs" observes that "Trading knowledge isn't new. ...one of the most attractive social innovations enabled by virtual communities was the way members could serve as information hunters and gatherers for each other" to provide collaborative filtering (p. 116). "Reputation is even more important in commerce than it is in conversation (p. 123)."

Tönnies would define the Sun community as Gemeinschaft, or community that has a shared belief or shared will. These Sun bloggers definitely exhibit more than self-interest (Gesellschaft) in the way that they share information, comment back and forth, link to each other, and show up on each other's blogroll.

The potential of this social capital and conversation is to create “a group of people who care about each other more than they have to (Cluetrain Manifesto, 1999).”

The People of the Sun blogroll are enormously varied. The overwhelming marjority are writing about things that are so technical that I can't quite understand what they are writing about, but I read on anyway.

There are more women blogging than I expected--that is a topic that was on our minds when I attended the local Chapel Hill blogging meet-up. There were only a few women that would attend that group and so the topic of whether or not women as a rule blog came up a few times. Men thought that women blogged more on personal than technical things, but I have not noticed that on the Sun blogs, probably due to the nature of their jobs.

Preece describes people as the "pulse of the community (p. 82)", with varying roles, and requiring "reciprocity for the group to survive (quoting Rheingold, 1994)". It is interesting that there does not seem to be any defined roles when you click on the main sun employee blog page. I'm sure the employees know that Dave is the Roller software creator and team leader, but otherwise, there is no mention of roles. It is also obvious that Jonathan Schwarz as the COO is considered the head-honcho blogger, but the blogroll is listed in order of hits and his is not always at the top of the list (one day I check he is #7, the day after Thanksgiving he is #1!)--this is democracy in the blogosphere.

The Purpose of the Sun blogs is very simple. Preece (2000) remarks that a purpose with "clearly stated goals attract other people with similar goals (p. 81)."

Welcome to Blogs.sun.com! This space is accessible to any Sun employee to write about anything.

The Sun Policy on Public Discourse deserves further attention because I think this is a good model for other organizations. Schwarz, whether knowing Preece's suggestions or not, follows several of her ideas, including reminding people of the appropriate "style of communication, netiquette, and accepted conduct."

* Schwarz starts by admitting to his employees that he is taking a risk by encouraging them to blog
* He reminds them, as their boss, that there are financial and legal matters to remember, but also sounds like their head cheerleader, reminding them to let the world know how smart they are
* He also reminds them that it is the company's job to provide them with the tools to not only do their job, but to blog about it (I want to work for Sun.)

For other organizations emulating Sun's blogging efforts, Preece highlights an issue more important to corporate communities than other types, e.g. nonprofits: stickiness. Figallo (1998) defines stickiness as something that holds and attracts online visitors to your site (or blog). This is important for community members to want to come back again and feel like they are a part of building the community. Authentic dialogue from your employees sharing their expertise with your consumers will be one way to create stickiness.

Jenny Preece's book, "Online Communities" focuses on what she believes are the most important aspect of creating online communities: Sociability (Purpose, Policies, and People) and Usability. Her advice is both helpful and practical for organizations trying to figure out how to communicate with their constituents in ways that will promote a sense of community.

Sociability to Preece is how the purpose, policies and people come together "to influence social interaction in the community (p. 7)". To me, sociability is the culture of the community--the distinctiveness of the people who participate and how they interact with each other to form a new collective group.

In viewing Sun's website, their homepage highlights the importance of community, not just for their blogs, but for many communities. At both the top of the homepage and the bottom right, their communities are listed. They include: Developers, System Administrators, Partners, Investors, Education, and finally, my focus: employee blogs. When you click on the communities page, you actually find three more communities: press, newsletters, and java technology.

To be more specific about the purpose of the Sun blogs, a statement at the top of the page says,

Welcome to Blogs.sun.com! This space is accessible to any Sun employee to write about anything.

Sun does have a specific policy for public discourse, with respect to the employee blogs, as outlined by COO Jonathan Schwarz and is available from the front page of the employee blogs. Basically, he reminds his employees that they are engaging in a conversation, that they should not reveal their "secret sauce", that they should be interesting in how they write, that they should write about what they know, that they should rememeber to "link", and basically to use common sense.

Finally, when you see the list of blogs on that page, you can tell that people are motivated to participate in this conversation. Word is that there are approximately 1200 or so Sun employees currently blogging. That is community.

Usability is a focus on "developing computer systems to support rapid learning, high skill retension, and low error rates (p. 8)." This is a very technical definition. I would translate usability as the way that the community software is created so that users can easily operate the software, find what they are looking for, and will come back to community again and again. Even though I don't understand most of what I read on the Sun website, I would rate usability overall very high. It is easy to get around the site--navigation is easy, and the site looks consistent from page to page.

One other aspect of Usability that Preece mentions is Community-Centered Development. In the case of Sun, Dave Johnson created the Roller blogging software even before he worked for Sun. Dave has been very community-centered, right from the beginning, by blogging about his development work and taking into consideration the suggestions and questions from others all along the way.

"Capitalizing on the Net" by Quan-Haase & Wellman (Ch. 10) describes the impact of the internet on three types of social capital: 1) network, 2) civic engagement, and 3) sense of community. Their research focused on the National Geographic website users and whether they felt a sense of community in their everyday offline life, as well.

This study found that people using the internet reach out to more people via email and the internet, drawing on weak ties (Granovetter, 1973). Granovetter explains that while we traditionally think of strong ties like family as being important, we cannot dismiss the importance of acquaintance or weak ties, as they can be important bridges to jobs, news, information, ideas, etc.

We would expect that the Sun bloggers would have strong ties to each other and weak ties to people outside of Sun. In examining Dave's blog, he has an interesting blogroll. There are some names I notice from Sun, like Tim Bray, who is Director of Web Technologies for Sun. It is interesting that Tim does not have a blogroll of his own, however. Then, I remembered that Dave had blogged about his Roller team earlier in the year about how he started at Sun alone developing Roller, so I was happy for him when I read he was up to a team of seven (!) working on Roller. I know these guys have to be on his blogroll: Matt, Lance, Anil, Henri, Allen, and Elias. Other Sun employees he links to: Claire, Jim, Linda (and she lists him), and Will (who also lists Dave in his blogroll).

The concept of weak ties is very similar to word-of-mouth. We rely on weak ties for a movie review or for a product endorsement all the time. How can business participate in conversations leading to weak ties, ultimately resulting in community? Dave is a great example of someone who is using his weak ties to create community through his blogroll list. I've noted that he is better than most people at actually posting a blogroll--some people don't even do this (guilty as charged). This is a similar concept to Malcolm Gladwell's point in his book The Tipping Point, when he talks about Connectors, or people who are good at making connections with other people. When you read Dave's blog, you know he is a Maven (another Gladwell term), someone who enjoys sharing information, and then when you see his blogroll, you see that he is also very good at connecting people to each other. His non-Sun blogroll includes two people we have talked about in our class: Joi Ito and Chapel Hill's own Ruby Sinreich. In my interview with Dave last spring, he talked about the larger Java community, and his desire to see that expand and improve. He enjoys seeing his software be a catalyst for creating community.

One other way to create conversations is through comments on blogposts. In my interview with Dave last spring, he mentioned that he is blogging about Roller so that users can know what is going on, but does not expect too many comments. I went through his most recent posts and noticed that, indeed, he does not have comments on every post. The comments are an interesting variety from colleagues to his mom congratulating him on completing a recent 10k run. I'm very impressed that his mom reads his blog--my mom recently said she googled me and found the word blog associated with my name, but has absolutely no idea what a blog is!

We read "The Internet in Everyday Life" (Ed. by Wellman & Haythornthwaite) and the interesting thing is that we could exchange the word "conversation" for "internet" in the title of the book. This would be the thesis of the Cluetrain Manifesto--the internet is speeding up the rate that markets are having the conversations they are apt to have, whether corporations are involved or not, and those conversations are not distinct from the rest of our life, but are intertwined into the fabric of our daily life.

Important points in this book:

1) Researchers and businesses need to understand what happens in all aspects of a consumer's life, not just their on-line life. When you read Dave Johnson's blog to learn about the blog software Roller, you know he is a serious geek (I mean that in the most respectful way!), but you also know that he is a father because he either blogs about his children or has pictures of them on his blog. In other words, the man "has a life!"

In "Smart Mobs", Howard Rheingold (2003) observes that "The virtual, social, and physical worlds are colliding, merging, and coordinating (p.xviii)."

I wish that Harris Teeter would understand this better--when we lived in Winston-Salem, I could do my grocery-shopping on-line, but now that we've moved to Durham, this Harris Teeter does not offer this service and I have to actually go into the store to shop. The mantra at my house is "mom, we are out of food again." There is a good reason: I hate to go grocery shopping. I want my Harris Teeter on-line shopping! The Winston-Salem store has emailed me many times asking why I stopped shopping there (you can guess I was one of their favorite shoppers!), but they don't seem to be listening to the answer: I moved. Guess I'll have to find someone else to have that conversation with.

2) We need to understand that internet savvy people are chronic communicators. Howard Rheingold (2003) calls this group "smart mobs" or "people who are able to act in concert even if they don't know each other (p.xii)." What does this mean for a company? For Sun, it means that they encourage chronic communicating. Just look at how many blogs they have and how much activity is going on. How can companies take advantage of these chronic communicators? Jackie Huba & Ben McConnell, authors of "Creating Customer Evangelists" and the blog Church of the Customer call these people Customer Evangelists. If they are loyal to you and your product, harnessing this energy and enthusiasm, this authentic voice, can be very powerful.

This can also work in reverse, by encouraging employee evangelism. In the Cluetrain Manifesto, they remark that "Companies can't stop customers from sepaking up, and can't stop employees from talking to customers. Their only choice is to start encouraging employees to talk to customers--and empowering them to act on what they hear. Workers can generate enormous goodwill as everyday evangelists for products and services they've crafted themselves, and thus take genuine pride in (p. 72)."

As Tom Hespos comments in a recent MediaPost column called Online Spin,
If, on the other hand, the marketer invests what it might put into a buzz marketing campaign into an online program, where paid employees of the company could monitor and participate in online conversations with potential customers, wouldn't that result in better relationships?

3) TV vs. On-line
Their research has found that people view tv activity different than on-line activity, which may be true, but the point that I think is lost on most folks is that chronic communicators are probably doing both--at the same time, as well as talking on cell phones and IMing their friends. If they are talking about you and your company, don't you want them to be saying good things in all of those places? A recent survey found that most execs are still wed to traditional advertising and are hesitant to jump into the new media fray. This is too bad--their customers are already there. Even six years ago, the Cluetrain observes that "Your effectiveness depends on how networked you are, how hyperlinked you are (p. 128). Hyperlinks are created by people finding other people they trust, enjoy and yes, in some ways love (p. 131)."

In Ch. 6 of "We the Media", Dan Gillmor says blogging "is a question of trust." He describes the characteristics of blogs, including
+voice
+focus
+real reporting
+good writing
+credibility by listening to critics

In analyzing Sun's blogs by each of these characteristics, they are all written by individuals, allowing each person's voice to come through. If you read through any of these blogs, you will notice that each person's personality comes through. I've been reading Dave's blog for awhile,which is a good example of all of these characteristics. Dave has a unique voice when he writes, as the author of the blog software, so his focus is on sharing his knowledge, yet being open to questions and critiques from others. He reports and writes well enough that he is now putting his knowledge into a book, "RSS and Atom in Action." I have started (trying) to read other blogs (some are very technical) and luckily for me found one that is slightly less technical that I can enjoy, MaryMaryQuiteContrary. She lets you know right up front she is quite unapologetically a marketing vehicle. That is transparency for you.

In Ch. 7 Gillmor calls blogs "a tool that fosters trust by giving up control." The Cluetrain Manifesto would agree with this premise when it talks about the fact that businesses have to stop controlling information through marketing and PR departments and start engaging in the conversations that are already occurring about them as a way to become more trusted by the market.

Trust is a big research and professional interest of mine. I have been studying how to build and maintain trust for over 10 years, so this aspect of blogging is what convinces me that companies don't really have a choice about whether to participate in blogging, especially if they are concerned with consumers' perceptions of their trustworthiness.

One of the biggest ways to build trust with others is by listening, not just talking. Gillmor reinforces this in Ch. 4 when he supports blogging as a way to be "learning by listening." This is so contrary to natural corporate communications to think about actually listening to what your customers think of your product and/or service. Gillmor sees this as a PR opportunity, not a threat. What they teach you in B-Schools, however, is the 4Ps: price, product, place and promotion--telling people about your company in creative ways--listening is not part of the equation. There is a newer approach (created by UNC's own Bob Lauterborn and his co-authors Schultz & Tannenbaum) called the 4Cs Marketing model:

• Not Product: Customer wants and needs
• Not price: cost to satisfy those needs
• Not Place: convenience to buy
• Not promotion: communication with the customer

This approach actually puts the customer at the center of everything that is done to consider the best way to communicate and take care of the customer. This model is only effective by listening to the customer.

In Chapter 4 of "We the Media", Gillmor specifically takes on public relations and marketing types with some rules he has developed. He starts, though by confessing, "I'm always glad not to be doing PR or marketing."

I'll confess that my combination of MBA and now Journalism coursework, I'm appreciating all sides of the discussion, but I would still be glad to be doing pr or marketing work. Here are his rules, and my commentary...

1) Listen hard. Check. I've blogged about this here. In any context, you can never listen enough. Listening builds trust. You also cannot have a conversation if one of you is not listening while the other is talking.

Here is Sun's contact us page. There are a million different ways for a customer to talk and for Sun to listen.

2) Talk openly about what you're doing, and why. Check, check. This is transparency. I learned the hard way a long time ago. I was working for a company that was building a new plant, but wanted to keep it a secret to surprise the customer (go figure). When the customer specifically asked, "Are you building a new plant, right next door to us?" my boss replied, "No, why do you ask?" This customer looked at me and just shook his head. When my boss left the room, he said, "Do you honestly expect me to believe that you are not building a plant, when your plant has already told my plant?" I told him that we were, indeed, building a plant and he was relieved to know the truth. But, we both were confused about why my boss would lie about something like that. All my boss could say was that it was going to be a great surprise to the customer when it was finished. All the customer could say was that it was an insult to be left out of the process from the beginning.

While Sun appears to be very open about everything they are doing all over their site and across all of their communities, The Press Community of Sun, focused directly at the media, makes it easy for the press to find the latest news and information about Sun, whether it is generated internally, or externally.

3) Ask questions. There are customers who know more about your products and services than you do, and may also have interesting ideas for new products that you might not have thought about before.

At the bottom of most Sun webpages, there is a question asking how useful this page was to the user, expecting a response.

This site met my need today.
Select --> 6 strongly agree 1 strongly disagree

4) Syndicate your information to the widest audience in the most efficient way. Good point. You can never communicate wide or well enough. Brian Russell, founder of audioactivism.org touched on this theme when he spoke to our class about podcasting. His goal is to educate people about media literacy, with a focus on storytelling. The Cluetrain mentions that PR people aren't as interested in stories as journalists are, prefering happy endings and not the complexities of life that a story implies. There is a growing interest in storytelling in the nonprofit world, and Andy Goodman is a consultant doing an excellent job helping organizations do this.

At the bottom of the Sun employee blog page, there is an XML buttom for the combined RSS feed for the site.

5) Help out by offering more, not less. Here, he is encouraging firms to keep a lot of information on their websites so that journalists can find it and then customers can, too. There have been studies done in the pr literature that have found that it is not always easy for journalists to find the information they need on a corporate website. The links are not labeled well or the information is not tailored to their needs. Companies do need to think about who their publics are when they put websites together.

Looking at the community page for Sun, you can see that they think broadly about their publics.

6) Post or link to what your people say publicly, and to what is said about you. Brian Russell calls this "link love." The Cluetrain talks about a hyperlinked world, where information is decentralized, which leads to more innovation.

The press community includes links to articles about Sun in other media, as well as executive blogs. There is even a link labeled "Contrarian Minds".

7) Aim carefully at people who really care. Marketers are notorious for sending information out to more people than really care about them, which means that they are probably leaving out people who really do care.

Sun has a way for people to register to become part of the Sun community. This enables them to direct their information at people who really care.

8) Correct your mistakes promptly and honestly. I have noticed that newspapers are getting better at this--putting corrections on the front page. Maybe corporations can take a cue from this.

I did find one instance on the Sun site of an apology for a software glitch.

9) Thank the people who teach you new things. I can't count the number of times that I have given feedback to a company, because I cared about that company, and that feedback has been ignored or worse, been met with resistance. Firms don't often understand that if we are willing to actually tell you what is wrong, we actually do care. When we take our business and leave, we have decided that you are not worth telling what is wrong.

Jonathan Scwartz's blog publicly thanks Larry. I don't know enough about the industry to know who Larry is, but when you go to his blog, you can't help but notice it.

10) Experiment constantly. Risk-taking is not easy nor popular, but it is the only way to grow. Innovation is what keeps people inspired and interested in your company. Otherwise, they will always go to see who else has something new.

There is a page under Research that lists all of Sun's projects and that status of each. That is both openness and a commitment to innovation.

In Chapter 3 of "We the Media", Dan Gillmor touches on the issues of transparency and openness, which are also related to trust. Dan says that blogs create a "higher level of transparency" because information of any kind can be verified by other bloggers and exposed as untrue or supported as true in the transparent world of blogging. This should be a good thing for companies as they want to be known as credible, trusted sources for products and services and information. A recent Harris Poll found that fewer Americans than Europeans have trust in the media: 62% of Americans don't trust the media, and 70% don't trust big companies. That leaves a lot of room for bloggers, who feel that they fill a gap in fairly reporting information of all kinds. As Dan also says, "You can't avoid more openness."

John Robinson, Editor of the Greensboro News & Record, discussed why the GNR started blogging and he discussed similar themes: transparency and openness. He wanted to find a way to let his readers "in" by understanding that they could ask any questions, or make comments on his blog. As I was listening to what he was describing I realized that this is a unique aspect of building trust: once you start the conversation, you open yourself up to others, and when you sincerely answer them, they realize that you are serious about having a relationship, and in that moment, you begin to build trust.

We were fortunate to have Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, speak to our class, and he also touched on these themes of openness and transparency, believing that they create a culture of mutual trust and an atmosphere of respect.

One of the (many) ways that Sun is transparent...

If you go to the Developer community, there is a section on an upcoming 2006 Java conference, where there is a forum asking for suggested topics to discuss at that conference. The forum includes: a way to register, a welcome message to me as a guest, and a list of the various topics the group is discussing.

Here is a portal to all of the Sun Forums.

One of the first things we talked about in class was to look for a virtual community that encouraged 2-way communication, or dialogue, between its participants and/or the organization that might be involved. As you can see from the blog list, the list of Sun bloggers is enormous. Those with the most recent posts are listed, as well as their technorati rating. There are blogs listed in japanese, chinese, and from all over the world. It's "a small world after all". As Dan Gilmor says in Chapter 2, "blogs are about voice and human passion."

The Cluetrain Manifesto describes communication on the web the same way...
"Compared to this personal, intimate, knowledgeable, and highly engaged voice, which is emerging bottom-up on the Internet today, top-down corporate communications come across as statel and stentorian (p.x)."

The web is not to "gather eyeballs" but "a global set of conversations--people talking together, in their own voices, about what they care about (p. xi)."

Doc Searls' philosophy of marketing (p. xiv) sums it up:
* Markets are conversations; and
* Conversation is fire. Therefore
* Marketing is arson

In class, we discussed the word Kairos, which means "an opportune occasion for speech". Using blogs to communicate with customers is a very powerful way to allow human passion to come through, unfiltered by a marketing or public relations department, allowing those with the most specialized knowledge to share their expertise with customers who are deeply interested.

The intersection of passion, expertise, and interest should make for some very interesting conversations on the train. There are too many organizations that don't take advantage of those opportunities to let their employees shine, instead, transferring an inquiring customer to investor relations for more information. You can bet that the curiousity and conversation end there. That is like sending people to the library, where talking is not allowed (with apologies to Michael). As Dan Gillmor cautions in Chapter 4, "Businesses need to engage in the conversations that are already occurring about their products and practices." Instead of practicing crisis management, companies can be participating up-front in creating the excitement and setting the record straight about their products and services.

As the Cluetrain Manifesto observes, "Natural, human conversation is the true language of commerce." (p. xvii)

A recent survey by IntelliSeek found that "Consumers are 50 percent more likely to be influenced by word-of-mouth recommendations from their peers than by radio/TV ads." This study also found that employee credibility is higher than corporate marketing campaigns. If it is Word-of-mouth, there will be talking on the train.

Before I do an audit of every corporate blog, I'd like to introduce you to a company that is intriguing to me--Sun Microsystems.

In Ch. 5 of "We the Media", Dan Gillmor quotes Bill Joy (who was) with Sun as saying, "most of the brightest people don't work for any one organization. Tapping the power of everyone is the best approach." You can find Sun's 1200+ blogs here. I had the opportunity to meet and interview Dave Johnson, developer of the Sun blogger software, Roller, which is how I was introduced to Sun's prolific set of bloggers. Dave created the Roller software and blogged about it as he created it, while working for another company. Sun liked the software, adopted it internally, and started asking him to make adjustments to it to suit their needs. He finally convinced them that it would be in their best interests to hire him to take care of them full-time, rather than get to their adjustments on his weekend time. In light of Bill's statement above, it is no surprise that they agreed. When Dave joined Sun, there were about 100 or so internal bloggers. As you can see, there are now over 1200! Dave takes pride in listening to "customers" to make Roller better and better. Dave is a rather modest guy but both in person and on blog, it is quite obvious that he has "a clue." I'd say that Dave is the conductor of the Sun blogs!

We are reading many books for JOMC 191.3, but one optional book that I have picked up and can't put down is the cluetrain manifesto by levine, locke, searls & weinberger. You can also find it online but I am still a person who needs to read something I am holding in my hand. The online version is a good place to start thinking about "markets as conversations". This statement alone had a big impact on me, with my background in corporate sales and marketing. There were so many times that my bosses would walk into Coke and Pepsi talking, but not prepared to listen. I am a listener by nature, so that behavior always felt unnatural to me. When I read the cluetrain, it feels like someone else is writing about something I have always known intuitively and I feel relieved.

Now, the Cluetrain authors insist that they don't want bumper stickers (or the equivalent) to remember the cluetrain by after it has passed, but since I am a late passenger (it was published in 1999), I will leave this as my scrapbook of my trip on the Cluetrain. Despite being 6 years old, I don't think their ideas have taken hold in nearly enough train stations. So, this is my attempt to take the Cluetrain cross country for another trip.

This blog will take a ride on the cluetrain, and make stops along the way to consider the many books and articles we are reading in our class and relate them to an area of interest of mine: corporate blogging.

All Aboard!