Response to Kingsley on the Successforce blog
Posted by Peter Mitton on 06 Oct 2006 at 11:05 am | Tagged as: General
I am always surfing around, trying to find interesting bits of Salesforce knowledge. Normally, I kept that information to myself or shared it with my team. But with the start of this blog, I feel a need to share that information when I find it. As a new blogger, questions like this are important to me. In his post, Kingsley at Successforce writes…
After Scoble and Charlie Wood blogged about how well SAP treated bloggers at their conference, I’ve been wondering - how can we treat our bloggers better?
And for those of you who wonder why we would want to engage bloggers, it’s because they write about us, and often in a way that appeals to the greatest PR machine on earth: Google. We would love for more of you to write about us (good or bad), and I’d welcome any ideas on how we can help you along.
Well, here are my thoughts, below the fold.
Great question. I have been wondering that myself. As I recently just started a new blog about Salesforce, I wondered, how do you put an emphasis on community creation.
I think one way is to get the word out in the first place about the blogs that are out there. Part of the reason I started my own blog was that other than a short list of “Official” blogs from Salesforce directly (like Successforce 
) and some others that are out there (”Thoughts on Salesforce”, “Perspectives on Salesforce”, “Salesforce Watch” and “Salesforce Heretic”) I had a lot of trouble finding that information.
Perhaps a community outreach to bloggers is required. I am not sure what that would look like, but we can look at the objectives of a blogger for some guidance. As I see it, a Salesforce blogger has two primary objectives.
- Get a message out that is important to them.
- Be noticed and read
Simple as that. Perhaps the thought process should lean towards finding ways to make that happen easier.
Just a thought from this “n00b” blogger.
I think they could make bloggers feel more like “insiders” and invite them to special events, presentations, office tours, etc. Maybe a social event / cocktail party before or during the dreamforce conference? Great to see SF is realizing there is value in sites like this one.
I couldn’t agree more! I think I am pretty valuable!
Hi Peter, glad to see another solid SFdc blog (I’m a reader not a blogger). I like Chris Kramer’s idea - I’d imagine new feature releases would be kept somewhat under wraps, but maybe “get to know key players in SFdc” events or something that could then be blogged about.
On a side note, it’s a good point that the official and well-known-but-unofficial Salesforce bloggers do a good job of going out of their way to recognize other blogging efforts. The practice of openness really is good PR for Salesforce.com and most CRM companies don’t do it anywhere near as well. Not quite enough to induce me to spend the effort to set up a blog, but at least I know I’d be welcomed.
I liked Mr Kramer’s idea as well. I would love to get invited to some special events. I have been to some of the user groups, and they are great for introducing people to the product, but less useful to the established user. I would love for the opportunity for more direct communication.
Finding other Salesforce blogs was so hard, you pretty much have to tip your hats to the ones that are out there. Its even easier when they are as good as they are. So far everyone I have interacted with at other blogs has been fantastic.
Hey, if you do ever start one, you will be more than welcome I am sure!
Thanks for your comments!
It would be nice to get invited to DreamForce with press credentials; after all, we are the “press” of the new era.
Also, it would be nice to have an short meeting where the decision markers at Salesforce listened to what we had to say and gave us their view in return.
Lastly, it would be nice to get pre-release info so we can prepare blog comments in advance. We’d respect an embargo because otherwise then could withhold pre-release info in the future.
Giving us this and then requiring only positive reporting would of course backfire, so they should realize they need to do this w/o expectation of positive “press.” If they do a good job, we’ll say so. If they do a bad job or set bad policies, well…
I like the idea of being considered credentialed press. And as long as we had no restrictions to what we would write (I imagine that would definitely not work for folks like ThoughtsOnSalesforce.com
) then it would work quite well.
I especially like the idea of getting some press releases in advance, as that would make life much easier on getting articles written in advance.
Good idea Mike!