Cynthia Cheng Correia on Blogs, Podcasts, & Newsgroups for CI
In a session about how to use blogs, podcasts, and newsgroups for competitive intelligence, Cynthia Cheng Correia covered the basics of competitive intelligence and how to evaluate and select blogs, podcasts, and newsgroups for competitive intelligence.
With regards to blogs, she shared a cautionary tale about marketing people who set up blogs with the voice of a consumer as an attempt to market something on the sly. The concrete example she used came from Wal-Mart a few years ago and a couple who blogged about shopping there while traveling around America. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell when something like that is happening, but it’s worth us keeping it in mind.
We also need to be aware of different levels of corporate blogging. Who is the audience? Who is blogging? Does the company sanction the blog? Or is it the writing of an employee blogging secretly in her spare time? Does the person have a grudge against the company? Unofficial blogs can be some of the best sources. (”They’re not BusinessWeek or C|net,” she says about an unofficial Microsoft blog, Mini Microsoft.)
Cynthia showed two different kinds of blogs at McDonald’s, the fast food chain. One is on the corproate site and could be read by the public. Another is aimed at the people who work at McDonald’s and is blocked from the public. The colors and wording on the site indicate it’s aimed at a much younger, more informal audience than the blog on the corporate site.
Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Google have very developed blogs for a variety of purposes: marketing, growing their community base, getting an edge over the competition, and more.
Newsgroup, consumer media sites, interest/affinity groups, and online retailers can be valuable sources of information about various products, companies, and industries. Be careful before posting anything because you don’t always know who all reads it.
