I recently finished my copy of Naked Conversations, the business blogging book by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. Robert kindly gave me a copy in the freezing Microsoft Redmond campus parking lot after we had breakfast with David Anderson back in January. My review: "Definitive." Need I say more? Until a few years have passed and we get some quantative feedback on the performance of closed and open corporate cultures, it's as good as it gets.
The number of bloggers from inside the network operators can practically be counted on the fingers of one foot. Global Crossing stands out as the exception, as there a whole [insert collective noun] of bloggers there working under the corporate banner. If today's telcos are going to remain relevant, they are going to need to address a range of deep and painful cultural issues. So I was curious to find out what made Global Crossing such a pioneer in the space. I put together some questions and sent them to David Siegel, their Director of Data Services Product Development and member of their blogging club. He's taken a great deal of time to respond at length, so I'd like to thank him for his generosity in sharing the back story with Telepocalypse readers.
His response in unedited. For the record, I have no direct or indirect financial interest in Global Crossing.
Do you have a "blogging business plan", or was the approach less structured?
We did not have a business plan per se, but we did have to sell the idea internally. The idea had been floated in our Product Marketing group in 2004, but there wasn't enough enthusiasm to take the project forward at that time. The idea was re-introduced last summer (2005) and folks were a lot more receptive to the idea. By 2005, we had many sources, including blogging evangelists like Alec Saunders and Robert Scoble that we could point to showing that blogging was a next generation form of communication. Additionally, further research identified corporations with existing blogging policies and public blog sites that we could point to like Sun and IBM.
We developed a two part blog strategy where in the first phase our bloggers would become regular readers of three top-rated telecom industry blogs (GigaOm, Pulver, and Rich Tehrani were the ones selected) and post comments whenever we felt we had something to contribute. The second phase was the launch of our own blog site where we would start posting articles and trying to build a readership of our own site.
Phase 1 launched in January, 2006, and phase 2 launched March 1st.
What are your goals from running a blog in full view of your customers and competitors? What benefits do you anticipate or seek?
We hope that our customers not only view the blog but interact with it. Beyond the customer loyalty that can result from the relationships that are built, we hope that engaging our existing customers in conversations about the industry and its direction will help us to focus our development resources in smart areas that will deliver more pertinent improvements and ultimately drive a higher quality product overall.
We also hope that the site will be interesting enough to attract potential customers, and if it doesn't directly drive sales, it should increase both brand visibility as well as the visibility of our thought leaders.
We really don't want our competitors to see the site but we can't really stop them either. Even so, whatever information they can glean from our conversations with customers may not be that useful to them since we are all engaged in slightly different business with different strengths and different target customers
Have you seen any tangible benefit from blogging yet?
Having just launched the site this past March, we haven't seen too many benefits yet but it is still a very new project. According to site web stats, we've seen a steady increase in unique visitors as well as # of visits per visitor month-over-month and we are just starting to get a few links from other sites. So from a visibility perspective, we feel that we're making some excellent headway for the amount of time the site has been up.
[Telepocalypse note to readers: I now get many thousands of visitors per day, but I remember the long haul of getting from dozens (thanks, Mum) to hundreds. Patience and commitment are key.]
What are the limits or constraints (self- or company-imposed) on your blogging?
The biggest constraint is time. Each of the headline bloggers has daily responsibilities that don't include blogging. If the company imposes any limits at all it is that we take care of our day job first, and blogging second. There are no other company imposed constraints really, other than the guidelines set out in the blogging policy. We don't have to run our posts by the marketing group or anything like that; it's all straight from the bloggers keyboard onto the site.
What sort of approval or process did you go through?
Our Chief Marketing Officer Anthony Christie had to sign off on the idea. We then had to engage our legal department to get our corporate blog policy completed. We also had to get CapEx approval for a server blade, but the cost was quite minimal.
Do you have a corporate blogging policy?
Yes.
What about Global Crossing's culture and business has led you to embrace blogging as a business tool where others have not?
Global Crossing is a NextGen communications network, (most) everyone knows that. We want to be a next generation company as well. If we are not engaging our customers with the newest and hottest communications tool of the century, how much longer would we be able to refer to ourselves as a next generation company?
I think there is another more practical factor as well that revolves around being smaller and a bit of an underdog brand-wise. Anything that can increase brand awareness without costing huge sums of money in advertising is worth giving a try.
Do other telcos need to update their cultures? If so, what's wrong and what needs to change?
In any technology related industry no one can survive with an outdated culture, telecom or otherwise. Incumbent telecoms probably suffer the worst from outdated mindsets (do they refer to those guys as bell heads outside the US as well?), but I have to believe that the employee who is not only resistant to change but puts up barriers to it is becoming less and less frequent. Still, we continue to see examples of Execs at the really big telecoms that know the world is changing don't feel they have to change, and they still use the same solutions in their bag of tricks to address the issues they face. I'm not sure there's any reason for them to change if they can use the strength of their market position and wallets to force everyone else (including legislators) to see things their way.
Five years from now, how do you see the "telco blogging" scene changing?
I am finding it hard to predict how many telecoms will follow Global Crossing and put up their own blog site for their employees to blog on, but I would guess that there won't be a single one that doesn't have a blogging policy to govern how its employees use the medium. Ours is fairly open and basically just says to use common sense and don't say anything that could damage the company or you might find yourself without a job. I expect that some telecoms will have a very restrictive policy comparatively.
Who knows, if we are a pioneer in the world of telco's, perhaps they are all waiting to see if it is successful for us before they create their own?
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Interview with Martin Geddes of Telepocalypse from IP Convergence: Beyond VoIP, Beyond Cost Savings
I had an opportunity to chat with Martin Geddes of telepocalypse about corporate blogging and the need for culture changes at telco's. Here
[Read more] Tracked on May 23, 2006 9:54 PM