A great post from Debbie Weil pointing out a US AdWeek publication on why blogging has not the set the world alight. To be honest I am totally baffled. Maybe its just me or maybe it was the industry I was in?

Now a bit of self disclosure. For many years I was in marketing - first in office application software and then in colour printers. I spent 3 years as Director of Corporate Communications of a major US Corporation charged with a mission to get our brand awareness to the highest levels possible but at the same time 'manage' the Division GMs and President. As the official spokesperson in Europe I had to watch what I said especially when dealing with the business press and financial analysts. I spent my life - and large chunks of budget -  trying to promote the business and trade press stories, get them to press conferences and meet senior management. We wined and dined them. Gave them so many t-shirts, caps and executive toys that they probably made a fortune re-selling them on e-Bay. All with one objective - to get some coverage.

Every month we got a clipping report which was analysed for rating of the coverage. Good, neutral or bad. We looked at column inches and tried to cross compare to our competitors. We also paid for our competitors coverage to be analysed.

In my last company all 3 Business Divisions spent money on customer satisfaction reports. We used external consultants to do call centre monitoring and an annual survey on customer satisfaction. We had User Groups. We published magazines and newsletters. We had ShowCase Technology events and attended over 40 trade shows a year across Europe. We always ran Focus Groups to get feedback and input before campaigns. When we re-branded we spent a fortune testing all types of creative concepts. Senior management went on customer visits as did the Presdent of Europe.

We desperately wanted to talk to customers and understand their needs, markets and applications. For us it was critical to get the feedback into the product design teams to stay ahead of the competition.

I have asked myself would I have used blogs? I would answer yes every time. Even though AdWeek listed many reasons against blogs to me it is simple. A blog is a personal CRM tool. Every CEO and their senior management team should have a blog. Sure you are going to get 'hecklers' but we are not talking about a political party conference where everything is controlled and stage managed. Customers who care enough to write about your product or service not working are 'gold dust'. For everyone that has the 'bottle' to complain there are 10 maybe even 20 who do not. They are an extension of your market research team. Giving you honest and heart felt feedback. Accept good and bad as both are equally as valuable.

A blog is a tool to start a conversation with customers. PR still has a role but briefing a PR agency to craft a press release that then gets put into a distribution system and then goes to many press some who take it as, some who extract a few points and print and others who critically analyse it is a long winded way of delivering information. Even when the journalist has done the story you have to rely on the media to publish it hopefully in the way you want. The customer has to read what was written by the journalist and interpret what was meant.

You can now blog and engage the customer in conversation directly.