SCOUT Corporate Blogging

Emerson Process Management, Deborah Franke & Jim Cahill

posted: October 29, 2006 8:23 PM

1.1.7 Company: Emerson Process Management

Bloggers: Deborah Franke & Jim Cahill
Student Interviewer: Amanda Johnsen
Blog: http://www.emersonprocessxperts.com/

Jim Cahill is the Marketing Communications Manager for the Process Systems and Solutions business of Emerson Process Management.  Deborah Franke is the eMarketing manager for the company.  Emerson Process Management is a supplier of process-automation technology, products, and services.

Both Deb and Jim told the interviewer that Emerson started the company blog as a way to get their company message out. The company prides itself in fostering innovation and Deb and Jim wanted to push the envelope in reaching their audience compared to other suppliers in the industry. Discussing in detail the benefits of blogging, Deb said, "What you are trying to do in services marketing is to show your trust, commitment, and creativity in coming up with solutions. Those traits can be demonstrated in every blog post."

Initially Emerson set up an internal server to host blogs, where employees could get used to the idea of blogging and podcasting.  The company added bloggers as people became interested in blogging. Once the company had set up their Movable Type blog, Deb and Jim worked with the HR and legal departments to set up a policy for the company, so everyone who wanted to, could blog.

For the external Emerson Process Experts blog, Deb and Jim keep it focused on making it easy as possible for customers in the process-manufacturing world to talk to experts at Emerson Process Management.  Deb said, "The best way to get visibility to your expertise message, we believe, is to blog."

Describing how Emerson came to pick Jim as the blogger, Deb said, "The reason we went with Jim was an internal concern that our bloggers would not understand our brand and our messaging.  When you start associating real people in a very large company like ours with huge brands like ours, there is just a lot of concern.  So, Jim became the obvious choice.  Jim has an engineering background and he has grown into a position where he is the hub of so many stories and he knows so many people across the company that we were able to get over many of the negative points with the decision makers.  Jim is the brand manager for many of the popular brands, so the objections that ‘our blogger won’t understand the brand!’ went away."

Jim added, "We didn’t expect the people who did have the expertise to begin blogging and building up a number of posts.  So, the strategy was that I would be a connector to the experts around the organization where I could tell their story individually and pop back on them in a few months based on what was going on there.  From other people in the organization they looked at it as a pilot for the company, but we wanted to show people both internally and externally that this could be effective and kind of a building block to get more bloggers going overtime."

Both Deb and Jim said that blogging is giving the company some really different results on the web, such as more coverage to areas of the company that were not getting any publicity, higher search engine rankings, and a way to communicate with customers and the press that was not possible before without a blog.  Jim notes how he receives emails, calls, and Skype VOIP calls from people all over the world trying to connect to various Emerson people and companies. Both Deb and Jim believe that blogging is a direct conversation where all the details of how the company operates are described.

Jim said that commenting on other blogs helps with the success of his blog because, "we are trying to build a conversation about the topic at hand and the more you add to the conversation, then over time others will begin in the conversation on your blog.  As more people become more blog and RSS aware, we want them to participate."

Blogger outreach was an important issue for the Emerson blog.  According to Deb, "you are participating because conversations are going on, the conversations just haven’t been as visible.  I think people are adopting blogs to be heard and people can jump in and be part of the conversations.  Word of mouth has always been around; it just hasn’t been on the web.  It’s also about community. It’s about the place.  It’s about the exchange that is happening.  You’re not pushing a message at them whether you are commenting or posting.  You are simply engaging with the community."

Deb finds that people who are connectors really help their industry.  Deb thought that Robert Scoble and Steve Rubel are two people who do that successfully.

Both Deb and Jim said that the posts that have generated the most interest are where there is already some discussion and interest on the web.  Jim said, “Steve Rubel pointed to our RSS starter kit in a post on his blog, and due to the readership on his blog of the tens of thousands, many people found us that would have never found it any other way.  So there can be an immediate impact if someone reads it that has some kind of interest some way.  They can be someone of a completely different World, but blogs have the ability to quickly amplify it and share it and other people can link into it and something can become very large very quickly.” The Emerson Process Experts blog had added something to the discussion through the blogger’s perspective on that issue.  

When describing tools for interaction in the blogosphere, Deb said, "Trackbacks are one of the tools that help build the conversation and we liked that we would be joining in as part of the dialogue."

Discussing the issue of whether a company should blog or not, Jim said, "You do have to look at the culture.  If you are an organization that wants to keep an iron hand on the flow of communication, this form of communication might not be for you.  Or, it might be an organization that is very firm in the information they want to go out and when they want to go out.  So, if you’re a business that can’t deal with the change of flow in information it may not be for you. But if you look at the companies out there, I would hope there is enough latitude between the two extremes to take the first step and try it internally on the company intranet."

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