Blog - A powerful communication medium for product companies

Blog is a powerful communication medium, extremely relevant and important for product companies. Products are often sold globally and even if product team is based in the US, at least 50% of customers are several time-zones away in Europe and Asia. This is more applicable when product team is based in India.

Customers can be reached through several mechanisms, advertisements, e-mails, user forums, web-site and now through blogs. However, very few customers opt to receive e-mail announcement making this medium ineffective. Advertisements don’t reach everyone, are too expensive and suffer from credibility problem. Company web-site is important reference for most customers however, processes required to maintain quality and legal/marketing hawks don’t allow for frequent updates of the company web-site. While I have used user forums for also collecting feature requests from existing customers, user forums are dominated by how-to and support issues and are certainly not the best medium to discuss long term product directions. That’s why, a blog is important. It can be updated frequently and is not seen as official document even though corporate policies need to be adhered to. In my opinion, product managers can and should use blogs to share their opinions and thoughts about the products. I have used blog (refer to Adobe TechComm Blog) for several things –

1. Understanding the importance of a particular workflow – For example, I posted on review workflow in technical communication and waited for comments, monitored page views and also any discussions triggered by my blog post on mailing lists or any competitive reaction. Sharing an idea or thought and measuring the reaction can help provide information that is often hard to get.

2. Repositioning the product(s) – Blog audience tends to watch every post and interprets the focus of the blog as the focus of the product. Hence, the blog should talk more about your strategic thrust areas rather than non-descript issues. For example, I talked a lot about review workflow, Technical Communication Suite, Product Integration, DITA and so on. These were strategic areas of focus and my blog reflected the same.

3. Making a point about competitive positioning – When we started our efforts to revive RoboHelp, RoboHelp lagged in some of the feature sets and we were constrained by Adobe policy of not disclosing product roadmap or pre-announcing features. Through our blog, we focused on product quality, range of features in which we were better than competition and also drop a hint that next version will be available sooner than later.

4. Make announcements about product direction – This can be somewhat tricky if the company follows the policy of not committing on future versions or sharing a product roadmap. However, if you provide the context, say that that particular area is of “strategic importance” and mention that “it is natural for anyone to expect” the future direction, you have guided the audience without violating the policy guideline. I know this is like walking the thin line, however, product often needs support from the management team to deflect criticism from competitors and ecosystem partners.

5. Setting up customer or partner meetings – If you are travel, it is important to meet key customers and key partners in that trip. Collecting information about competition, customers, and partners is an important role played by product managers. This cannot be achieved remotely and requires an intensive engagement. I have often used blog to announce my travel plans and seek customer meetings.

6. Explaining complex features or rationale for a decision – Product demos can be posted through blogs. This comes handy if there are misconceptions about certain product features. For example, I saw a blog post criticizing the product for not having a particular workflow in the feature. Since I knew it existed, I posted a product demo on the blog in less than an hour. This helped correct any negative perceptions about the product being propagated.

I have only provided a few examples to illustrate the utility of a blog for a product company. I am sure there are many more instances where a blog can help. Do share in your perspective.

The fact that my blog (Adobe TechComm Blog) is now being kept alive by my team members is heartening and reinforces my belief in the power of this medium.