Banking Segmentation and the Super Bowl

Felicia Ramsey
Felicia Ramsey|February 7, 2012

As a new contributor to SAS’ Customer Analytics blog, let me introduce myself. I’m a SAS field marketer focused on integrated campaigns, digital strategy and the marketing investment for Financial Services in the US. As a marketer, I always take an interest in the Super Bowl commercials.  The $3.5M spent per spot to reach such a broad cross-section of the population astounds me. Now, I am not denying the entertainment value, but is this approach the “magic bullet” of marketing? Whether you prefer the return of Ferris Bueller or the Clint Eastwood ad (or were partial to the David Beckham spot, like me) you have to wonder whether these advertisers see the ROI on these mega-millions. Can such a mass-marketing approach have the same kind of impact as using customer analytics for smart, targeted and customer-centered campaigns?

There has been tremendous progress in recent years in how we can segment and target customers using analytics.  The ability to accurately predict customer behavior in real-time is intriguing and happening today.  Analytics is the key to understanding customers. Using analytics, we can leverage customer data to create highly defined segments, and we can tailor offers that specifically cater to those individual needs.

While the concept of customer segmentation is not new to banking, there is a shift towards becoming more customer-centric. In the past, banks were far more concerned with products and offerings, and banking is now at a pivotal point where the priorities have shifted. An increased focus on the customer and the customer experience is becoming fundamental to the way banks operate. A new report from BAI Research highlights the importance of understanding customer needs and conveys ideas on how to address them.  Banks are using analytics to optimize their marketing investment so that they can do more with less, at the right time, in the right channel with the most appropriate customers.

To learn more on this topic, SAS is co-hosting a Webinar with BAI on February 14, 2012 at 2:00pm ET. This Webinar will highlight the banking segmentation research completed by BAI and will include the perspective of Leroy Abrahams, EVP of Suntrust Bank. The panelists will share the insights and practical information necessary to develop customer segmentation strategies, and will describe how analytics is the key to finding the best opportunities for exponential revenue growth and greater ROI -- and rather than $3.5M commercials, isn't that the real marketing “magic bullet”?

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Thoughts on the Forrester Wave and campaign management

John Bastone
John Bastone|February 6, 2012

In my view of things, as a (semi) professional in software product marketing focused on the needs of direct marketers, with the possible exception of “CRM”, there may be no term more abstract, than that of “campaign management”. Seriously.  I help market and sell campaign management software, yet very few know what that really means. Why is that? We all get mail, some of it actually targeted, some more of it unfortunately mistargeted, doesn’t anyone think about how that stuff makes it to our house?

Even Wikipedia, my go to source on all things abstract, has one entry on political campaigns, and a separate entry with only a few paragraphs on the term, mostly dealing with automated dialing systems (I'll be fixing that shortly).

So the experience of reading Forrester Research biennial gospel of what it calls, the “Forrester Wave: Cross-Channel Campaign Management (PDF),” is like experiencing a glass of water after months in the desert (or in my case, a cold beer before Super Bowl kickoff). Beyond Forrester and Gartner, few independent voices are really talking these days about campaign management in a substantitive way, what with all the chatter around “SOCIAL”, “CRM”, “INTEGRATED MARKETING” (OK, admittedly some of that is my own). For any of you, who like me, used to work in direct marketing, and actually, managed campaigns, do yourself a favor and read this report.

Forrester's process is actually pretty interesting. Imagine you are a software vendor, and have to do the following:

  • Explain in great detail, what it is that makes you exceedingly qualified to be in this space
  • Prove it with references who will talk about their experience using your software to solve real problems
  • Prove it with more references who will fill out surveys about how they use your software to solve real problems
  • Prove it by articulating a vision of the future of campaign management using your best “thought leader” voice
  • Prove it by showing real software, working through real marketing scenarios, delivering real results, in a live on-site session

It don't want to say its grueling, but I am currently lacking a synonym more apt than grueling. Regardless, by going through this process, Forrester simultaneously educates the greater marketing community on essentially the state of campaign management, while also delivering what is in essence, an evaluation of how each software company is doing relative to its peer group. Here’s an analogy: They are like the annual Consumer Reports car issue, but instead rating new cars, they are rating campaign management software.

I won’t spoil the story (OK a hint, I'd be writing about something else if we did poorly), but in reading through the research, here are some themes I observed:

  1. Campaign Management, ain’t just about managing campaigns anymore – The sheer breadth of capabilities they researched shows they weren't evaluating companies in their ability to pull lists of customers, they were evaluating how software could help run every aspect of a marketing organization's operations. Apparently, if you want to compete in today’s cross-channel campaign management marketplace, you need to account for setting up marketing plans, consolidating customer information, being able to analyze it, being able to manage offers, across channels, optimally, in real-time. No one in interested in hiring staff to glue a dozen different systems together to help a marketing department run. So helping a company pull a list of households from a postal code and orchestrating the blast of a catalog isn’t really going to cut it anymore to compete in this space.
  2. Conversations must be managed centrally, in a…you guessed it, Cross-Channel Campaign Management platform – I am paraphrasing that bit, but the point is the same. Many of the customers polled as the basis of this research, say that newer channels such as social and mobile, need to be centrally managed, to ensure consistent communications cross channel. And what all of that means, is that campaign offer can be a direct mail, or it can be a tweet, or it can be a text message, or it can be a call center representative soliciting with a specific offer. All must be accounted for in one system of record.
  3. Campaign Management is still not mainstream – One stat jumped out at me.  Only 40% of marketers surveyed by Forrester were using some sort of campaign management system. For all of talk about 360 view of the customer, enabling 1:1 dialogs, having personalized offers for your customers, the reality is, most marketers have no such system to pull this off.

These were some of my takeaways, but again, feel free to draw your own conclusions by reading the report.

To close, I’d be remiss in not mentioning how truly humbled and excited many of us at SAS are by the validation much of this research means to our own, nearly ancient history (in the technology world time) in this space. In many ways, tracing SAS’s advancement in this space, parallels the ever increasing importance of Customer Intelligence being the glue which binds the integrated marketing management processes of some of the best run marketing organizations on the planet. For those of us Customer Intelligence lifers who have been preaching the gospel of customer centricity, Forrester’s research reads like a solid “Amen”.

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New research papers: marketing strategies of banks and supermarkets

Charles Randall
Charles Randall|January 30, 2012

Whose mobile communications are hitting the spot?  Which broadcast strategy helps banks make an emotional connection with their customers? Who sends out such badly targeted e-mails that customers see them as less personally relevant than a TV advert? The answer to these questions may surprise you.

Our recent survey of customers multichannel experience, ‘Pleased to Meet You’, provides the answer to these and many other such questions.  We’ve just published two new research papers that specifically examine the marketing strategies of banks and supermarkets to find out what works for them, and where they need to try harder.  They are now available for download here:

Unfortunately we don’t have the space inside this blog to go into all the findings from these papers, but at least we can answer the three questions above.

Banks below the line channel performance

Whose mobile communications is hitting the spot?

The surprise hit channel for Banks is their uses of SMS messaging.  Many banks in the UK have started providing mobile alerts for everything from accounts approaching overdrafts, to checking against fraud.  And the customers love it. In fact it is the only direct channel that the banks use which lives up to the promise of personalised and relevant communications designed to engage with the customer and build brand satisfaction.  Sadly the same cannot be said of banks direct mail efforts which are generally somewhat less well received.

 

 

Which broadcast strategy helps banks make an emotional connection with their customers?

Banks broadcast media performance

Of all the broadcast channels that banks employ, only one really seems to hit home, and then only to a relatively small audience.  And that strategy is sports sponsorship.  At the time of the survey a major international rugby tournament was underway, and this registered a significant presence in our survey.  Whilst rugby was the event that showed through at the time of the survey, it would be quite reasonable to assume that fans of other sports would be equally likely to derive an emotional attachment to their banks, mobile phone companies etc as a result of sponsorship of other sporting events.  Interestingly, the segment of customers for whom sponsorship worked were also the segment most antagonistic to other channels, so for those customers this forms an important channel.

 

Which sector sends out such badly targeted e-mails that they are seen as less personally relevant to their customers than a TV advert?

E-mail vs Direct mail marketing by supermarkets

Shockingly supermarkets, the masters of direct mail, do not appear to apply the same disciplines of personalisation and targeting to their e-mail communications. The performance gap between these two theoretically similar channels is dramatic to say the least.  Whilst e-mails are seen to be a cheap form of marketing, it is doubtful that a strong incentive to improve performance in these areas.  But faced with declining open rates, and the raising of other e-mail barriers, maybe we need to understand that the cost of poorly targeted e-mails lies in the damage it does to our relationships with our customers, and that is too valuable an asset to so lightly disregard.

I hope you found these snippets from the research interesting.  I would encourage you to download the two papers as there is much more insight contained within.

This research was carried out in partnership with Professor Hugh Wilson of Cranfield School of Management and MESH Planning.  The initial findings, including a fascinating behavioural segmentation of customer preferences, were published in ‘Pleased to Meet You: How different customers prefer very different channels.’

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Big SAS at Retail's Big Show

John Balla
John Balla|January 12, 2012
During January 15 - 18, 2012 in New York City, the National Retail Federation will conduct its 101st annual "Retail's BIG Show" and once again SAS will be there in a big way.  The retail industry is a big deal at SAS and SAS benefits retailers in a big way, with more than 600 of the world's leading retailers using SAS to stay competitive.
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Retailers use SAS to drive better results by addressing business issues, such as  integrated merchandise planning, price optimization, space planning, assortment planning and optimization, and customer issues, such as online customer experience analytics, contact policy, campaign management and social media analytics.
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Get more details when you visit SAS in Booth 1352, where you can hear firsthand about the important trends and technology shaping the future of retail and learn what you need to do to keep your business competitive.  There are several exciting opportunities during the conference that you won't want to miss:
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  • Three BIG !dea sessions in Room 3D09:
    -  Winn-Dixie Stores on Monday, Jan. 16, at 4 p.m.
    -  DSW Inc. on Tuesday, Jan. 17, at 10:15 a.m.
    -  Sobeys Inc. and Liverpool on Tuesday, Jan. 17, at 11 a.m.
  • Free book offer: Pick up Retail Analytics: The Secret Weapon in Booth 1352.
  • Book a meeting with a SAS specialist and see a plethora of product demos.
In addition to all that, you can charge your devices for no charge in the SAS booth charging station for smartphones, PDAs, cell phones and other gadgets.
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Marketers in all industries should always keep an eye on the retail industry because retailing is the essence of a market - the storefront / cash register / online shopping cart literally represents the intersection of the “supply” curve and the “demand” curve.   In addition, the interplay of customer issues and business issues in retail means that sound brand management, where communicatons are aligned with operations, is critical to success.  As a result, each of the SAS demos at the show are important, so don't miss any of them!
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In this blog, we discuss the issues marketers face in evolving relationships for business growth, so based on what SAS has planned for NRF 2012, I hope it’s clear that our focus is on being the company that companies turn to for business solutions.   So if you’re in New York next week, visit SAS at NRF 2012, otherwise please visit www.sas.com for more details.
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Five ways to evaluate influence without using Web site graders

Alison Bolen
Alison Bolen|January 9, 2012

Without fail, at every social media conference I attend, someone will approach the microphone during the Q&A portion of a presentation and ask the speaker or the panelsts, "How are you measuring influence for your blogger outreach programs?" Or, "How can we replicate what you're doing to decide whether certain online personalities are influential?"

The answer given is always the same. And that is: there is no easy answer. "We just know what we're looking for," is often the response. Or, "There's no formula that will work for everyone. You have to decide for yourselves what you're looking for and then find a way to identify those people."

They're not just dodging the question. The bottom line, frankly, is that there is no single place to plug in a name or a URL and get an answer to the influence question. Sites like Klout, Alexa, Hootsuite and Technorati have all attempted to become the go-to place to measure influence, but they're really just one piece of the puzzle.

I have at least five steps I like to take before I even look at those sites - if I look at them at all. In my world, the questions posed to me often sounds like this, "Is it worth my time to comment on this particular blog?" Or, "There are too many blogs out there. How do I decide if I should add this one to my rss reader?"

These are the first steps I take when answering that question:

  1. Evaluate the content first. If the content of the site fits your area of interest and you enjoy reading it or have a reaction to it, others might as well. If you would enjoy reading and commenting there regularly, and your extended audience would also find the content useful or engaing, that is the most important thing.
  2. Evaluate the site's community. Who else is commenting there? Who is the blogger linking to? Do you recognize names you know?
  3. Do a Google search for the blog author's name. This is basic research. Has the blogger written any books? Have they been quoted in the media? Are there other credentials that show up in a basic search?
  4. Do a Google blog search for the author's name and for the URL of the blog. This will reveal whether other bloggers are linking to the author's blog - and how often.
  5. Do a Twitter search for the author's name and the blog URL. This will reveal who is tweeting about the author and the author's blog.

I compare the exercise to the same thought processes you use when hiring event speakers. It's not all about the the numbers. The most expensive speaker is not always the best speaker for you. The one with the most books or the best reviews is not necessarily the best pick for your event. You want to hire the speaker who will resonate with your audience and align with the messaging of your event. It's the same when evaluating a blog. Become a regular reader and commenter at the blogs that align with your own goals and those that will resonate with you and your audience.

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SAS uses its own solutions to boost conversion rates

Justin Huntsman
Justin Huntsman|January 2, 2012

Happy New Year!

As we begin 2012, I think we can all agree there is no question that the explosion of digital technology over the past few years has redefined the relationship between vendor and customer. With so much product and vendor information just a click or a tap away, customers are more informed – and empowered – than ever.

Buyers have instant access to every piece of marketing material about a company and its competitors. And social media allows them to solicit and receive real-time opinions from peers, colleagues and complete strangers across the company, across the industry and across the world.

Recognizing this, we now engage prospects in meaningful two-way conversations online, using SAS Customer Intelligence, including SAS Marketing Automation for effective, efficient campaigns and SAS Digital Marketing for relevant e-mail messaging.

Using SAS to manage lead processes, we've seen a 10 percent jump in conversion rates. Click-through rates have soared more than four-fold, and campaign response rates have improved more than 100 percent.

Using SAS Marketing Optimization, we've slashed targeted blast lists by an average of 48 percent, thus lowering opt-out rates by 43.75 percent and increasing click-through rates by 15.56 percent.

Curious how we did it?

You can read the full success story, SAS marketing team boosts lead-to-sales-opportunity conversion rates by double digits, to learn how we:

  • Implemented a lead-nurturing strategy (read Trust a skinny cook? for details on our lead nurturing strategy).
  • Used a scoring method to separate casual browsers from active buyers.
  • Automated email communications to visitors according to next-best-offer in the nurturing cycle.

 

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The holiday jingle marketing mashup

John Balla
John Balla|December 23, 2011

According to Wikipedia, marketing with music can roughly be traced back to 1923 with the dawn of commercial radio broadcasting.  What we now know as a "jingle" first aired on Christmas Eve in 1926, touting the merits of General Mills' Wheaties cereal.  As we all know, musical messages have since become a staple for advertisements on broadcast and other electronic media because they are very effective.  There's no denying that the catchy tunes stick with you, so the intended messages stick with you, too.

As many of us may be aware, holiday music also stays with you- they are often catchy, upbeat tunes that you hear repeatedly and they end up stuck in your head.  For me, it rings especially true because, as I mentioned in my 2010 holiday message, a holiday music soundtrack runs an ongoing loop in my head this time of year.

In that context, I offer this opportunity to hear a few holiday music staples mashed up with key themes explored in this blog during 2011.  THe list below has links to the related tags embedded in the titles.  For best results, please read/sing these out loud with the corresponding holiday tunes in your voice:

Do You Search What I Search?
"Said the analyst to the website's tags:
Tell me who has surfed here!
What terms struck a chord ev'ry time?
Tell me where they surfed next!"

Rockin' Around the Nurtured Leads
"...adding value to the funnel!
Customer interest at all time highs,
Tells me campaigns 're meaningful."

Hark! The Cust'mer Database Sings!
"...Meaningful segmen-ta-tion!
Fewer bad inter-actio-ons,
cust'mers hear our messages."

Feliz Sentiments!
"Feliz Sentiments! Feliz Sentiments!
Feliz Sentiments picked up with social media analytics!
I wanna know what people 're sayin'!
I wanna know how to respo-ond!
I want to know about the viral storm before it starts to fo-orm!"

Grandma Got Run Over in Realtime
"...chatting live with contact center reps!
Without access to the correct profile,
we lost the chance to meet her needs right then!"

Walking in Retention Wonderland
"eMails work - but if you're list'ning!
If you're not - they're just annoying!
A beautiful sight, an opt-in tonight!
Walking in retention wonderland!"

And for continued excellent results in the coming new year, let's end by bringing you back to the best first step in any data-driven marketing plan:

Auld Lang Data
Should data quality be forgot,
Your decision making suffers!
The first step in good marketing
Is to get your data clean!"

As always, I'd love to hear your suggestions for other topics you'd like to see explored in 2012.  You can also propose any of your own holiday music - marketing mashups.  Either way, I appreciate your following and look forward to another great year in 2012.  Happy Holidays!  JB

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Five tips for ongoing impact at tradeshows

John Balla
John Balla|December 16, 2011

My friend and colleague, Matt Fulk, has detailed in his posts some of the great ways we've used SAS Customer Intelligence to improve our own marketing.  Using SAS fits with our culture of measurement and analysis that keeps us constantly focused on finding better ways to do things, and one area that has received some well-deserved scrutiny is third-party tradeshows.

Tradeshow opportunities are evaluated at SAS using a standard process we've developed, and even so we've found that some of the most promising opportunities have not produced the hoped-for results.  That said, tradeshows have a place in a well-balanced marketing plan, so one way to mitigate any downside potential is to focus on ways to improve the results with “ongoing impact.”  Here are five of my favorites:

1.  Look for pre- and post-show touches

Admittedly, there is nothing new or whiz-bang about pre- and post-show touches, but I'd suggest this as one of your minimum requirements when considering any tradeshow opportunity.  If the show won't provide the pre-registration list and the actual attendee list, try to find the value with the 4 suggestions below. Since these events are gatherings of your target market, use your interactions to try to get your audience to opt-in to something, such as your blog or a resource center.  Doing that extends your interactions well after the show.

2.  Engage with Social Media – before, during and after the show

This is low-hanging fruit when your audience is professional marketers, but there are some industries where social media adoption is just now starting to grow.  Whatever the case, use available social media channels because doing that can be more impactful than pre-and-post show postcards or email blasts for three important reasons.  First, by engaging in the social media aspects of the show, you are associating your name and that of your company with the show and its “hot topics.” Second, your target market will self-identify and self-qualify themselves simply by following you or "liking" you when you emerge in this context.  Third, you can build your relationships with these people over time by engaging with them on their terms and in their preferred medium.

How to do it?  Look in same places where you are most active, such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn:

  • On Twitter, look for the show's hashtag and use it, such as #DMA2011, #FMF11 and #NCDM.  Before the show, share your plans and also the parts of the upcoming event you're most excited about.  During the show, tweet during sessions and share the points you find most interesting. After the show, ask for input and provide suggestions for ways to learn more about some of the major topics at the show.
  • On Facebook, look for the show's page and "like it."  Comment on posts and share what you're most interested in or details about your plans at the show by focusing on how it will enhance the show experience for attendees.
  • On LinkedIn, share your plans for the show with your own followers, and consider creating an event page for any side-activities you've planned during the show.  Look for the show's presence in any LinkedIn groups and join them.  As on Facebook, comment in the group's discussions on topics that are raised and relate it back to your enthusiasm for the show.  Highlight the ways your plans for the show will enhance the experience for attendees.

3.  Provide speakers for a session or two

Research the process for submitting abstracts for speaking opportunities and submit multiple on as many topics as is relevant.  Ask about the show's themes and what the major topics are for which show organizers need content.  Try to engage one of your customers whose experience will be most interesting for the audience, or find a thought leader to speak if your budget allows it.  A noted author with a recently published book is a good choice because you can include a drawing for signed copies of the book in the session.

During the session, introduce the speaker to the audience in a way that explains the connection between what your company does and why it made sense to sponsor the speaker.  Keep it short and to the point (60 - 90 seconds) and do not do a sales pitch - it's an explanation why the sponsorship makes sense to the audience.  Close the session with an invitation to subscribe to your blog or a link to visit and learn more - make it easy for the audience to opt-in to ongoing impact.

4.  Throw a party

Unless your target market has restrictions on hospitality (such as governments), a reception or executive dinner is a great way to enhance your target market's experience at the show.  Even if they are unable to accept, you'll have made an impression simply by extending the invitation.  Plan it so that it supports the content in any speaking sessions at the show you're sponsoring, and/or include your speakers as the featured speaker.  This is yet another opportunity for customers to self-qualify by accepting your invitation, and then it gives you the chance to have a more in-depth conversation away from the hustle & bustle of an exhibition hall.  Make sure you have enough people from your company so that each attendee at the hospitality event gets some attention and boosts the inclination to have an ongoing relationship.

5.  Preserve the content and share it

My perspective is that video recording your speaking session and having the rights to promote the content is the best way to drive ongoing impact at a tradeshow .  There are many, many reasons why I believe that and here are some of them:

  • Doing that is a great way to engage the folks who may have wanted to attend the event, but somehow could not be there.
  • You can offer the video as a post-show "thank you" gesture. One nice example was detailed by Justin Huntsman in his post which includes an embedded YouTube link about our session at the 2011 eMetrics Optimization Summit in San Francisco.
  • A video recording can also be transcripted and the content can be re-cast as a summary paper, which is downloadable or printable at will to read even when not online. These can be wonderfully engaging documents. even on potentially dry topics.  A great example is from that same session at eMetricsm which we was turned into a paper titled, "How to Stop Annoying Your Customers."
  • You can also take the audio feed of the session and turn it into a podcast - some people prefer this medium.  As an example, here is the link to a podcast series from a session we hosted at the 2011 SAS Global Forum Executive Conference.
  • Having the fresh content gives you a good reason to reach out to your contacts to share it, and you can amplify that impact by tying it to a lead nurturing campaign.  Or you can even use it to spark interest in your support of the show the following year.
  • Doing all of the above gives you lots of searchable content - so find all the ways you can make it searchable and you'll really have ongoing impact.

On the topic of search, consider this - YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google, but it is a separate search "ecosystem" than Internet search.  Knowing that, you can surface your content in both worlds by posting the video recording both to YouTube and on your Website.  With relevant tagging, you've put a toe-hold for your company in both search ecosystems on that topic, and you've also tied it to that large tradeshow in both places. Bada-bing!

Here's an example of how we did that with David Meerman Scott's Thought Leadership session at DMA:2011, which we posted to both YouTube and to sas.com.  What's even nicer is that David included the recording in a blog post of his own and our friends at the DMA have included the asset on the DMA Knowledge Center.  We're also crafting a whitepaper from this content and it's nearly finished so check back and I'll post the link in a comment below.

In the meantime, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, and especially your ideas.  Let's add to this list with other examples of what you've done or may have seen others do well.  As always, thank you for following!

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The year of social at SAS

Kirsten Hamstra
Kirsten Hamstra|December 16, 2011

2011 has been a big year for social media at SAS.

The new SAS Social Media Portal

For our employees:

  • We launched the Social Media Resource Portal as the one-stop destination for all employees interested in social media
  • Our internal social network, The Hub, was born and now connects nearly 8,000 employees
  • Social Studies, our social media training & and education program, rolled out to all employees
  • We introduced new standards for creating and managing company social media presences
  • The new global social media team shared best practices and strategies

And those are just the highlights!

Today marks another important milestone for social media at SAS. You might have noticed a “Follow Us” on the upper right-hand side of sas.com. Our corporate website now features the SAS Social Media Portal, which is a page that highlights all of  the great things we’re doing in social media.

We’ve integrated live feeds from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, forums and Knowledge Exchanges. The site also features “quicklinks” to our main corporate social properties. We hope the SAS Social Media Portal will allow us to create more 1:1 connections between SAS and you, our customers and users.

The SAS community is what really drives us to continually build and improve upon our communications and relationships with you all. Social media allows us to create those connections in a more meaningful and direct way, and we hope you’ll join us there.

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How to get a dozen comments on your next B2B blog post

Alison Bolen
Alison Bolen|December 14, 2011

Let's start with a true/false quiz:

  • True or False: Nobody comments on B2B blog posts.
  • True or False: Quality blog posts will always generate comments on their own without promotion.
  • True or False: Using your personal contact list to draw commenters to your blog is cheating.
  • True or False: The only comments that matter are from genuine, regular readers.
  • True or False: You have to blog all the time if you want to build up enough readers to comment on your blog posts.

Are any of these true? I propose that they're all false, and I have a case study about a recent SAS blog post that shows why.

Caroline McCullen is the Director of Education Initiatives at SAS. She blogs once a year on the SAS Voices blog during Computer Science Education Week, and her posts for the last two years have generated great conversations. See the comments areas on her posts:

How does she do it? These are just a handful of the things she's doing right:

  • Write an interesting and topical - but not exhaustive - post. Caroline makes her point clearly and provides links for reference, but she does not write a 5,000 word essay covering every possible argument. Keeping the posts brief leaves plenty of room for other people to add their two cents and build upon the ideas that Caroline has already presented.
  • Focus your post content on the issues, not yourself. Computer science education is an important issue to Caroline and to SAS - but the issue itself is bigger than that. She focuses on the broader implications instead of narrowing in on why this matters to SAS.
  • Promote the post to your contacts, but (again) promote the issues first. Send an email with a few key facts that points people to your content.
  • Do not be afraid to ask. Some bloggers are afraid to ask directly for comments, but it makes sense to request comments from leaders in the field who can make a meaningful contribution.  They might actually be flattered if you request their opinion, and their comments are sure to make the conversation richer. Suggesting one or two areas that are ripe for additional comment doesn't hurt.
  • Encourage email and hallway commenters to re-comment on the blog. If someone approaches you in the hall and mentions how much they liked your post, ask them to reiterate their points on the blog itself. When a colleague sent Caroline a few links that related to her post, she asked them to leave a comment with those links so others could see them too.
  • Respond to every comment. When readers see that you're taking the time to respond, they will be more encouraged to comment - and anticipate your resonse.

The Friday before Computer Science Education Week, Caroline promoted the event in an email to her friends, with a link to the event's site. Three days later, she sent a brief email to her contacts with a link to her blog post and a request for comments. For a handful of key contacts, she sent personal emails that included details she knew they would appreciate.

If you're a more frequent blogger, you might not want to blast your entire contact list for every single post, but since Caroline blogs infrequently, she can contact everyone. More regular bloggers can pick one or two posts a month to send to everyone. Or consider dividing your contact list into groups and sending relevant posts to the relevant groups.

What else do you see that Caroline is doing right? How many of these tips have you already tried? And what else do you do to encourage conversation on your blog posts?

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