A Year End Assessment with EarthLink’s Blogmaster
It’s been a little over a year since we relaunched the
EarthLink corporate blog -- Earthling -- with blogmaster Dave Coustan at the helm. As many of us roll out corporate blogs or manage existing ones, we must be prepared to assess what is working and what isn’t. We should also ask if our blogs live up to their original missions or whether they need to be modified.
Dave and I sat down as good bloggers and PR people should do for a yearly check-up.
Greenfield: It’s been a year. Any surprises?
Dave Coustan: There have been lots of small surprises all along. Each new email, comment, and link reference is its own surprise in a way. Sometimes I’m surprised at what stirs someone’s passion when they find it months later via search, like a recent comment I got on an older entry about the video game Cyberball. I guess it’s also been surprising how busy I can get when I’m researching multiple stories and trying to help out various departments with lots of things at once. Sometimes I feel like I’m making one of those Dagwood sandwiches from the Blondie comic. It’s easy to forget you put the mustard jar on your head.
Greenfield: Any desire for do-overs?
Coustan: Nah, when you write just about every day, you always feel like you could have done something better but no single boneheaded mistake sticks with you all that long. Early on I had trouble resisting the urge to revise things that were already published. Not really substance, just stylistic choices. It’s tough to overcome the writer/tinkerer’s instinct to constantly refine.
Greenfield: What is your most typical blogging moment? Non-typical?
Coustan: Most typical moment is finding myself saying to someone “Hi, I write Earthling, EarthLink’s blog. I’m trying to track down x about y, and z referred me to you. ” Most non-typical moment is pausing to organize my notes, or having time to breathe.
Greenfield: What was Earthling’s original mandate? Any changes in the works?
Coustan: Earthling’s original mandate was to serve as a human interface between the company and the public. I remember Chris Holland, a former EarthLink engineer and friend-of-Earthling, framing it for me as I prepared to be interviewed by Om Malik at CES last year. He said, “You’re the translator between the geeks, marketers and managers etc. on one side, and the public on the other side.” I’ve enjoyed being that human interface for lots of people including regular readers, EarthLink customers, bloggers, members of the press, company partners, and even employees themselves.
Are there changes in the works? Always. My hopes for 2007 include possibly bringing more focus to Earthling, helping the company as a whole adopt a more open and conversational communication model, and helping us to develop some social- and community-focused tools on the product side.
Greenfield: How do you decide what you write? How do other departments factor into your decision making?
Coustan: Story ideas come from all over. Mostly they come from conversations, from reader emails and comments, from what I read and think about, and from what I see going on around me. But I also get story ideas pitched directly to me by corporate communications, marketing, product, engineering, you name it. It’s up to me to pick the stories and decide on the best angles for Earthling. I try to stay in sync with product launch and marketing cycles, and make sure I know when something interesting is in the works and when would be the best time to start talking about it. When it comes to EarthLink matters, I try to consider what a current or potential user of our stuff would care about, and what parts of it they’d care about most. I depend on corporate communications to help me stay on top of developments in some of the larger initiatives like municipal Wi-Fi and voice. They also help draw the lines around what’s proprietary information and what’s shareable when I’m in doubt.
Greenfield: What has been the reaction from rank and file EarthLinkers, management and the outside world?
Coustan: I used to be able to sneak around the halls, but now EarthLinkers know who I am and send me story ideas and links. Over the course of the year I think more and more people have come to understand what a corporate blog is and what it is I do exactly, which is a good thing. Management has been very supportive, and I’ve had whatever access I need to the executives. And the welcome from the outside world has been very warm. I’ve been impressed with how friendly and welcoming industry and professional bloggers, thinkers, analysts, and journalists have been throughout my travels.
Greenfield: How do you measure success?
Coustan: To quote Ty Webb, “By height.” It’s tough to say what should be the primary measure – audience metrics, interactivity metrics, the daily human interactions (via e-mail, phone, IM, comments), customer issues, and/or information I’m able to share with the public.
Greenfield: Thanks Dave.
--------------------
Dave and I have regularly debated word choice, tone and subject matter, but that is ok. We each have the company’s interest and our own professional integrity at heart.
Working with a blogmaster has been a learning experience for yours truly and has allowed me to explore a new way of communicating. Part of my education is releasing control and recognizing that the blog, not a press release, should drive our online outreach. That was the case when we used the blog to announce that we had been selected as the finalist in our municipal Wi-Fi bid in San Francisco. It is also where we addressed customer concerns about DNS and where we discussed myReader, EarthLink’s RSS aggregator, and myFavorites, our social bookmarking tool. I think we are still working on the interplay of press releases and blog postings. I often ask whether a blog posting before a product goes live undermines the news value of a press release or enhances it. Ultimately, picking the right vehicle is less important than engaging the customer.
Overall, I would say that at year’s end, Earthling is a success. From a numbers perspective, page views, comments and our Technorati ranking are up. No big blow ups. Complaints from readers are minimal, and management has been supportive. We adhere to our blogging policy, abide by the rules of the blogosphere and respect the intelligence of our audience. The key is that Earthling’s influence is extending both internally and externally.
Oddly, I would be comfortable with more transparency and would encourage our management to post more. In 2007, we will need to explore how we can better incorporate product blogs into the mix. I am hoping that the success of Earthling will result in more EarthLink employees writing about EarthLink matters and personal ones.
Let me get back to you.
Technorati Tags: Blogging; Earthling; Dave Coustan; Corporate Communications; EarthLink;
Dave and I sat down as good bloggers and PR people should do for a yearly check-up.
Greenfield: It’s been a year. Any surprises?
Dave Coustan: There have been lots of small surprises all along. Each new email, comment, and link reference is its own surprise in a way. Sometimes I’m surprised at what stirs someone’s passion when they find it months later via search, like a recent comment I got on an older entry about the video game Cyberball. I guess it’s also been surprising how busy I can get when I’m researching multiple stories and trying to help out various departments with lots of things at once. Sometimes I feel like I’m making one of those Dagwood sandwiches from the Blondie comic. It’s easy to forget you put the mustard jar on your head.
Greenfield: Any desire for do-overs?
Coustan: Nah, when you write just about every day, you always feel like you could have done something better but no single boneheaded mistake sticks with you all that long. Early on I had trouble resisting the urge to revise things that were already published. Not really substance, just stylistic choices. It’s tough to overcome the writer/tinkerer’s instinct to constantly refine.
Greenfield: What is your most typical blogging moment? Non-typical?
Coustan: Most typical moment is finding myself saying to someone “Hi, I write Earthling, EarthLink’s blog. I’m trying to track down x about y, and z referred me to you. ” Most non-typical moment is pausing to organize my notes, or having time to breathe.
Greenfield: What was Earthling’s original mandate? Any changes in the works?
Coustan: Earthling’s original mandate was to serve as a human interface between the company and the public. I remember Chris Holland, a former EarthLink engineer and friend-of-Earthling, framing it for me as I prepared to be interviewed by Om Malik at CES last year. He said, “You’re the translator between the geeks, marketers and managers etc. on one side, and the public on the other side.” I’ve enjoyed being that human interface for lots of people including regular readers, EarthLink customers, bloggers, members of the press, company partners, and even employees themselves.
Are there changes in the works? Always. My hopes for 2007 include possibly bringing more focus to Earthling, helping the company as a whole adopt a more open and conversational communication model, and helping us to develop some social- and community-focused tools on the product side.
Greenfield: How do you decide what you write? How do other departments factor into your decision making?
Coustan: Story ideas come from all over. Mostly they come from conversations, from reader emails and comments, from what I read and think about, and from what I see going on around me. But I also get story ideas pitched directly to me by corporate communications, marketing, product, engineering, you name it. It’s up to me to pick the stories and decide on the best angles for Earthling. I try to stay in sync with product launch and marketing cycles, and make sure I know when something interesting is in the works and when would be the best time to start talking about it. When it comes to EarthLink matters, I try to consider what a current or potential user of our stuff would care about, and what parts of it they’d care about most. I depend on corporate communications to help me stay on top of developments in some of the larger initiatives like municipal Wi-Fi and voice. They also help draw the lines around what’s proprietary information and what’s shareable when I’m in doubt.
Greenfield: What has been the reaction from rank and file EarthLinkers, management and the outside world?
Coustan: I used to be able to sneak around the halls, but now EarthLinkers know who I am and send me story ideas and links. Over the course of the year I think more and more people have come to understand what a corporate blog is and what it is I do exactly, which is a good thing. Management has been very supportive, and I’ve had whatever access I need to the executives. And the welcome from the outside world has been very warm. I’ve been impressed with how friendly and welcoming industry and professional bloggers, thinkers, analysts, and journalists have been throughout my travels.
Greenfield: How do you measure success?
Coustan: To quote Ty Webb, “By height.” It’s tough to say what should be the primary measure – audience metrics, interactivity metrics, the daily human interactions (via e-mail, phone, IM, comments), customer issues, and/or information I’m able to share with the public.
Greenfield: Thanks Dave.
--------------------
Dave and I have regularly debated word choice, tone and subject matter, but that is ok. We each have the company’s interest and our own professional integrity at heart.
Working with a blogmaster has been a learning experience for yours truly and has allowed me to explore a new way of communicating. Part of my education is releasing control and recognizing that the blog, not a press release, should drive our online outreach. That was the case when we used the blog to announce that we had been selected as the finalist in our municipal Wi-Fi bid in San Francisco. It is also where we addressed customer concerns about DNS and where we discussed myReader, EarthLink’s RSS aggregator, and myFavorites, our social bookmarking tool. I think we are still working on the interplay of press releases and blog postings. I often ask whether a blog posting before a product goes live undermines the news value of a press release or enhances it. Ultimately, picking the right vehicle is less important than engaging the customer.
Overall, I would say that at year’s end, Earthling is a success. From a numbers perspective, page views, comments and our Technorati ranking are up. No big blow ups. Complaints from readers are minimal, and management has been supportive. We adhere to our blogging policy, abide by the rules of the blogosphere and respect the intelligence of our audience. The key is that Earthling’s influence is extending both internally and externally.
Oddly, I would be comfortable with more transparency and would encourage our management to post more. In 2007, we will need to explore how we can better incorporate product blogs into the mix. I am hoping that the success of Earthling will result in more EarthLink employees writing about EarthLink matters and personal ones.
Let me get back to you.
Technorati Tags: Blogging; Earthling; Dave Coustan; Corporate Communications; EarthLink;
