Corporate blogs... my kids are blogging, so what?

Many kids or young people are blogging, so what? That's the common feedback I receive when mentioning blogs to serve a Commercial/Professional Service. Keep in mind that a blog can be an incredible and unique 2 ways communication channel to your customers, accelerating innovations and gather direct feedbacks.

Of course, you have to coordinate such activities and you can't leave your blog without proper resources. At the same time, you can not directly control it, otherwise, you will not generate a positive approach and reactions from your customers. You will have to accept customers' freedom to complain about your services or products and consider all complaints as potentially innovation opportunities!

You will need a team of communication specialists to manage it carefully, without (too much) controls, and to turn it into a competitive advantage.

Read more about Corporate Blogging opportunities on SearchCIO.com "Blogging's ROI Becoming Clearer", an article by Paul Gillin

Article abstracts
"...McDonald's Corp. does it to monitor the quality of its sprawling restaurant chain. Dell Inc. does it to address its customers' technical support issues. Southwest Airlines Co. does it to perpetuate its image as the fun and friendly carrier. And Benetton Group S.P.A. does it to take a stand on global and political issues...."

"...Pfizer Consumer Healthcare, a division of Pfizer Inc. before its acquisition by Johnson & Johnson Co. last year, used Cymfony's service to track customer comments about its consumer products on blogs and message boards. "The insights that came from reading discussion boards verified some of our thinking but also opened our eyes to possible market opportunities that we may not have seen," said Tom McMillian, director of relationship and interactive marketing...."

Once Again, Turn-off your TV!

I have tried Joost.com, it's pretty cool, I could browse the available channels and watched any reportages at anytime. Yesterday, I just tried one about the Titanic, good quality of streaming, full screen and the overall Joost player interface is very simple.
http://www.joost.com

While talking about Joost, others competitors are willing to keep the big pie for themselves, look at youtube, they have just proposed to US Presidency candidates to open their personal video page on Youtube Channels and all did!
http://www.youtube.com/members?s=po&t=w&g=-1

Last but not least, 40 TV channels broadcasted over the Net,  Zattoo unveiled a groundbreaking new peer-to-peer IPTV service that makes live, quick-start, long-play Internet television a reality for broadband users, broadcasters, content owners and advertisers. Zattoo enables advertisers to leverage the most successful web-based advertising methods in combination with the best attributes of broadcast television "spots" by supporting banner ads, targeted text ads and video clips. There are three major benefits from using these formats
http://zattoo.com

So as much you can't transfer you entire TV advertisement spendings to Online campaigns, prepare yourself to the TV-Internet Mix!

Explore Virtual Worlds and Social Networks today to build your brand loyalty tomorrow!

Watch this video, quite interesting, Secondlife and Social Networks' approach by text100, a PR company represented in 29 countries. Of course it is a bit commercial, but they do share their experiences and thoughts about the future. text100 believe that the power of loyalty in Online Communities will dominates brand building and reputation. Companies need to experiment Virtual Worlds/Social Networks, become early adopter and start building loyalty now. If they don't, a competitor will and a competitor with the best loyalty in social networks within the next 5 years will win the brand building and brand loyalty battle.

Text 100: Branding building in Second Life - ~10 minutes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCHoXnUOqsU&mode=related&search=


Now, have a look at this real life project, Patient Opinion, funded jointly by the Department of Health and South Yorkshire Strategic Health Authority.
A revolutionary online system which allows anyone to share their experiences of receiving specialist treatment on the NHS Health Service.
http://www.patientopinion.org.uk

More about Brand loyalty on Word of Mouth Basic Training: How-To: Earn Brand Loyalty in Social Networks?
http://www.womma.org/wombat/blog/2006/10/howto_earn_bran.htm

More about Social Networks on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network

Healthcare within the cyberspace?

Social Networking already started with sharing videos on youtube, pictures on flickr and even some strong business models, such banking, are re-think like Prosper.com a "people to people" lending community. Now watch this a bit closer, things are happening within Healthcare as well:

Social Network for oxygen patients
"SANTA BARBARA, Calif., Feb. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- The 1.6 million Americans who require therapeutic oxygen can all breathe easier. The popular website, OxygeNation.com, has joined forces with Leverage Software to launch an interactive online community for oxygen patients... "
Read more

and even beyond Social Network on the net, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Secondlife.com!
"We can't always expect people to come to our Web site or use our tools directly, Janice Nall, director of the CDC's Division of e-Health Marketing, said this week. The CDC is one of a handful of government agencies staking a place in Web-based virtual worlds such as Second Life"
CDC

eyeforpharma has produced a free report on Web 2.0 approaches in Pharma which you may be interested in. Unfortunately, I can't link it directly from my blog, you have to register first, but it is worth 2 minutes registration.