From Pankaj Jain, who is President & COO of Webdunia in India come these words of wisdom today about the use of blogs during the product development phase. He writes:

Blogging to tease: Start your blog before your offering hits the market. Give your bloggers a preview or a series of peeks. During the product development period, build on these relationships with several types of bloggers, adding comments to their postings and advancing the ongoing dialogue. Depending on the product or service type, the process can be started months in advance, raising the perceived need for your offering several notches before it culminates in the launch.

I would add: potential customers invited to participate in the product development cycle are more apt to buy the finished product, and buy it sooner than people just learning about the new product at launch time. Two, the wisdom of crowds would imply that with the participation of many more people, the new product is apt to be more right.

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Mass media has shattered into niche, and from there it went social. Today, it's not enough that you might publish a blog about your little slice of reality. Now, readers need a friend/peer that they respect to actually recommend that they pay attention to that tiny snippet in your blog. It is here where the viral aspect of your message becomes extremely important.

So the lesson, I think, is to make sure your company is willing and capable sharers of expertise, and that they do it online, daily if possible. Decouple the "corporate" voice from communication and find ways for managers to actively and intelligently evangelize the brand by building their own personal brands online, within the context of the company message. If that means your CIO develops a following, go with it! The ones that build a personal brand and stay…they are PR gold.

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It's New Years Eve here in South Natick. Like the holiday or hate it, you'll probably agree it is at least a time to take stock and make pledges to yourself about the coming year, both personally and professionally. Maybe in the time it takes the clock to transition from 2007 to 2008, you'll consider whether or not to make 2008 the year in which you'll make some wholesale changes in the way you market your products and services.

To evaluate that possibility, here's a column by Michelle Richard who is the co-owner of Coalesce Marketing & Design Inc. in Appleton, Wisconsin. It's all about a market target that in a recent survey was at the top of the list for more than 80% of marketing executives polled: Generation Y, which they say happens to be twice the size of Gen X.

The column is worth reading from beginning to end if you're interested in learning why traditional media isn't going to reach this audience; if you want to better understand how and why this group is becoming increasingly immune to old advertising formulas.

Happy New Year?

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