Scoble, Shel, and the Amazon CTO

So Scoble, Shel, and the Amazon CTO walk into a bar...

No, that's not how the story goes. Scoble and Shel have been road warriors in the 3 months since their book Naked Conversations published. They've spoken at countless conferences, seminars, and private meetings for businesses about blogging. I haven't blogged much about these events individually but yesterday's Amazon meeting and the 3 posts about it fascinate me:

Scoble: Three audiences, three different cultures

Shel: Three Seattle Talks

Werner Vogels, Amazon CTO: Naked Answers

I wasn't there, I didn't hear the presentation or questions, but this would be my take, from the perspective of an editor with a lot at stake with Shel, Robert, and Naked Conversations, and a lot at stake as an employee of a company who depends on the retail prowess of Amazon. There, that's my disclaimer.

In 1996, Amazon would have jumped all over blogging without a 2nd thought. As a start up, they were taking massive risks every day just being in business. ROI? We don't need no stinking ROI. Try it today and if it works great, if it doesn't work and we're still in business tomorrow, try something else.

In 2006, with a massive worldwide business, incomprehensibly large IT needs, and a responsibility to shareholders to deliver profit, Amazon and their CTO are rightly going to ask a lot of tough questions before investing employee time or resources in blogging. Now while Werner's post doesn't use the term ROI, he is asking what about blogging improves Amazon for customers. He's asking why "institutionalize blogging at a wider scale around Amazon?" Their author blog feature shows that they do get blogging (despite a couple of needed improvements I pointed out about 6 weeks ago). Werner's blog shows that they do get blogging.

But I think looking at it wondering why to "institutionalize blogging at a wider scale around Amazon" is the wrong question. Please, as a blogger, I don't want to be "institutionalized."

I think the right perspective is could Amazon do more to encourage employees to do their own blogs, or at least foster an environment where employees are free to blog about products and services, without institutionalizing it. It seems like there must be something they can do that doesn't cost anything, something about policy or climate, that would encourage employees to follow Werner's lead. If there are 100 Amazon employee blogs about the book business, or online retailing, I sure haven't seen them. Given the chance and the green light to do that, time would answer Werner's questions about the customer value of employees blogging. In fact, here are 4 Amazon blog ideas that I bet some Amazon employee would do on their own given the green light:

1. Amazon associates blog: Someone who's passionate about Amazon associates writing about what works well for bloggers using the Associates program, pointing to blogs that use associates creatively, discussing other online-retail co-marketing programs similar to associates
2. A book review blog. Amazon still uses "editors" I think to write reviews of selected books. A multi-author blog discussing books, independent of any publisher marketing and co-op expenditures
3. Other specialty store blogs: A parent to parent blog about some of the baby and infant stuff they sell through their babies-r-us partnership; a digital photography blog from one of their electronics partners
4. A ebook/eproduct blog: something from someone working on the sales of do-it-yourself, sell your own ebooks, music, etc on Amazon. Marketing, selling, advice for content creators.

I'd read every one of these. They'd probably help me use my puny Amazon associate skills better, I'd buy more books and baby stuff, and I know that the authors telling me they want to self-publish ebooks but don't know how to start would eat up #4.

I didn't see Shel and Robert's presentation so forgive me if I duplicated any of their ideas.

BTW, on my question from Feb about why an author with one or more existing blogs would blog on an Amazon plog too, I have the answer to that now, and I'll blog a few thoughts on that later.

Comments

[Werner]

You are absolutely right, Jim. My "institutionalize" question was intended to trigger this exact discussion and I am really enjoying the many different suggestions passionate people like you come up with in response to this this little controversy. I just had hope that it had happend in the meeting instead of afterwards ...You are absolutely right, Jim. My "institutionalize" question was intended to trigger this exact discussion and I am really enjoying the many different suggestions passionate people like you come up with in response to this this little controversy. I just had hope that it had happend in the meeting instead of afterwards ...

[Robert Scoble]

Werner: I'm sorry too. Now that I see what you wanted, I wish I could replay it. I didn't think we were there for a point-by-point debate. If I had known that this was going to be like an executive review, I would have had more stuff.

What kind of stuff? Well, for instance, Microsoft's customer satisfaction numbers have gone up for the first time in years and our surveys are showing that blogging is a major part of that.

What other kind of stuff? Well, the Stormhoek winery has doubled sales using just a blog (we said that yesterday, I guess that didn't make the point with you).

Or, that at http://channel9.msdn.com we had more than three million unique visitors last month -- all there through word-of-mouth mechanisms.

I would love a rematch, though! We could go on stage at a conference and call it "blogger showdown" or something like that.

[Chris Elliott]

I would be interested in seeing a "blogger showdown".

I find any blogging competition that would build buzz and promote the medium interesting, but when companies don't have the same people blogging a lot every day there is a quick loss due to lack of reinforcement. It is fast and easy to start, but without someone there to push the content into the blogs day after day it quickly loses meaning