FreshNetworks Blog

Today’s Financial Times has an interesting article on the value of C-Suite bloggers – asking what the value is of them blogging. Why should CEOs and their peers start a blog and can you really measure ROI. The article is based on an issue that many people who work in social media and social networks are discussing: how to measure the benefits realised from the costs of engaging people in this way.

However, there is the problem of that seductive term, social media. One common characteristic of social media, networking and blogging activities is that they appear to cost money with apparently no concrete return. In fact, some people might argue that social media usually turns out to be synonymous with expensive and time consuming and no clear benefit for the company.

I’m not sure I quite agree with the implication at the end of this article. For one thing, blogging doesn’t need to be expensive. Obviously the cost in time for a more senior blogger is greater than that for a more junior one, but a good and engaging blog could just have regular and very short posts. David Milliband, the UK Foreign Secretary, manages to achieve this very well in his posts on his Foreign and Commonwealth blog. I suspect the real expense comes when the executive herself doesn’t blog, but a PR agency is engaged to do this for them.

Whilst many PR agencies are great, and there can be a real value to them running a brand blog, I think that running a CEO blog in this way isn’t appropriate. At FreshNetworks, we find that the most successful activities in social media are ones based on honesty and transparency. And open and transparent approaches need not be expensive.

This still leaves the question of value. The FT article discusses how blogging can be a great way of communicating with customers. And we know from our experience that real and transparent communication like this can be really engaging. Putting a financial figure on this benefit is not easy to do. But their are times when the value of blogging is truly apparent.

While this question is difficult to answer, a blog that focuses on a precisely identified target group allows you to get opportunity costs under control. In times of crisis, for instance, the blogging CEO can try to set facts straight online if need be.

The benefit to British Airways of having an established and well-read blog from Willie Walsh during the Terminal 5 crisis at Heathrow earlier this year would have been huge.

Building a blog is building a resource. The effort you put it makes it there when you need it. A blog should be part of any businesses communications tool-kit. It’s an easy way to get content out, to make your voice and opinion be heard and to provide a space where you can start to engage with people, in normal times and times of crisis.

Should CEOs be blogging? Yes, undoubtedly. Maybe not full-time if they can’t, maybe sharing the blog with others in the business. But the evidence is that running a successful blog returns value in terms of engagement. And the higher the level of the blogger the more interest it is likely to attract.

Some more reading

• Insights and sharing at the FT
• PR 203: How to Pitch a Blogger (or at least How to Pitch Jeff Pulver in 2008)
• The cost of social media
• The Business Implications of Social Media
• Why Are You Investigating Social Media
• “Interesting, but of no commercial value”

Following up on our posts about what British Airways should have done during the T5 fiasco at Heathrow (see posts here and here), I notice today that American Airlines are doing what we advised BA to do.

Last Friday they quietly launched an online blog, AA Conversation, as a way to keep in touch with customers online. The blog only has a few entries so far and is basic. Its success needs to be judged on how it is used in the longer term but the first signs are very encouraging. It contains service update information and critically offers explanations for why delays and cancellations have happened.

This kind of medium is a great way to engage and inform passengers about what has happened. The blog also allows you to include more detail than you could in an announcement or a brief section on the existing website. It’s a great way to make sure that as much information as possible reaches the passengers online.

Keen users will follow the blog by RSS, others can just sign up for updates by email. Comments are encouraged and are flowing in.

One to watch – this could be managed badly and not used, or it could become a model of how airlines inform and engage with their passengers. Giving them information they need and allowing them the right of reply they want. This has to be better than the photocopied letter that BA handed out to people during the T5 fiasco. Let’s hope American Airways put in the time and effort to make this blog really work – that has to be a good development for all air travellers

By now we all know about the fiasco at Heathrow Terminal 5. We’re into the weekend, and BA is still having to cancel flights. The outlook is not good for the weekend; flights are being cancelled and the press is full of discussion about how the recent days is humiliating for the UK (see here). Yesterday Helen wrote about her expereinces of geting to Vancouver (see here) and in particular our views of how experiences like this can have a huge impact on a company’s Net Promoter Score. People are more likely to talk about bad experiences than good ones, but people are even more likely to talk about a situation where a bad experience is turned around or dealt with well. When things go wrong, how you act becomes critical to your business.

So what could BA have done better? At FreshNetworks we specialise in sustained customer engagement and growing advocacy. So here’s a bit of free consultancy for BA. In our experience, when things go wrong there are five steps that a company should take to make sure it engages with its customes in the most impactful way, and that it minimises any negative impact on advocacy.

Step 1: Hold the conversation

When things go wrong it is critical that the brand holds the conversation. They don’t want others to be setting the agenda, least of all those affected by whatever the problem is. To do this effectively, there needs to be a mechanism for them to do this and it can’t just be something they start when the problem occurs. They need an ongoing and constant means of informing and being the point of reference for customers.

In the UK Transport for London (TFL) start to get this right. The tube is plagued with delays and cancellations, more so as we are in the middle of a major upgrade programme. Not only do TFL have a realtime website detailing current and planned closures and problems (something BA do have but that seems to be less real time), but critically TFL engage the customers. If you register your daily journey and the time you take it, they’ll send you a text (for free!) to let you know of any problems. This is great if I need to know to leave that little bit earlier to get to work on time. With hundreds and thousands of BA customers affected last week, most of whom have mobile phones, BA could have used engagement like this to let them know what was happening and to keep them informed.

Step 2: Have a single point of contact

A big issue when problems strike is that the market is crowded with this information. In addition to holding the conversation, you also need to have a single point of contact. This could be online – a community, forum or group where people can comment on what’s happening and share their experiences as well as getting the information they need. Too many brands are concerned about harnessing negative comments and experiences. But these comments will always get out. Better to gather them on a site and in a format you can control and in a place where you can respond to them. As we saw over the last few days – the alternative is that the press will get hold of these comments and use them as the focus of their stories. This will have only one effect – spreading the negative comments further and adding more voices into the mix in a confusing situation.

Step 3: More information not less

A major criticism when things go wrong is that the brand hasn’t told you why. More information matters here – let customers know what the problem is so that they can understand and empathise. I’m reminded of a journey home when I lived in France. Two trains were delayed – a TGV from Marseille to Paris and a train from London home. On the TGV we sat at Marseille station and there were angry mutterings around me until the announcement came on “we are delayed at Marseille because a person has been fatally injured on the line ahead of us”. Suddenly the mutering stopped. The person in the seat next to me told the guard he was a doctor and asked if he could help. On the UK train we were not told anything either, the same muttering ensued. Finally we were told of “unforeseen incident”. The muttering only intensified.

People understand that problems happen, but when they’re angry and upset by a delay or incident it’s better to let them make up their own mind about whether it was justified. Give them all the information they need to make this decision. Bring them into your problem and make them understand you’re doing what you can.

Step 4: Close the feedback loop on criticism

When people are angry or critical, it’s important to close the feedback loop. And a photocopied letter such as the one Helen received from an anonymous department doesn’t help. Neither does the Chief Executive speaking on TV but not to those affected by the problem. You need to respond to each person’s complaint. Explain why this is happening and what you’re doing (or not doing) to solve the problem.

This isn’t easy to do. Responding to people individually just isn’t feasible so a two part solution is needed. An awful lot of discussion about a problem will quickly hit the web – twitter, blogs, forums and communities will be alive with conversation within minutes of anything happening. BA needed to be there, responding and commenting, give the reasons for the problems and responding to people as individuals. Even better, they could direct people to their own community, respond to people there and then be able to point similar queries to the same response. This is what Dell do with their Ideastorm, and it’s a huge success. Close the feedback loop online.

Of course this feedback loop needs to be closed offline – staff at the airport needed this level of information too so that they could respond in the same way. Display screens at T5 could display the most voted for or common comments from the online community to interface with offline complaints. The options are endless with your own community and data.

Step 5: Use existing advocates to your advantage

In a crisis your advocates are more important than ever. But you can’t grow these overnight. It takes ongoing and sustained activity to build and engage with your strongest advocates. Only once you have done this will they serve to your benefit in a crisis. What was surprising about the BA situation is that they should have strong advocates. They have a well networked group of employees and a strong loyalty scheme – both often indicators of a strong groundswell of advocates. Sadly it doesn’t appear either of these groups were helping BA this week. The former were actually critcising the company and adding to the negativity (see some commets on the pilot communtiy pprune), and whilst the BA loyalty scheme is strong, there is little community element to it. And this is essential for building sustained engagement and advocacy.

So BA got it wrong. Moreover they didn’t take advantage of the situation to turn things around. When disaster strikes you realise how engaged you actually are with your customers, how many of them are advocates. The essential step is to hold and control an ongoing and open conversation with dissaffected customers, something BA didn’t do this week.