Example product blog: Scooba Clean

Scooba

I created a sample product blog to demonstrate how a corporation might engage a potential market in advance of a product launch. I chose iRobot Corporation and their latest product, Scooba the floor washing robot. I created a blog named Scooba Clean to show what a product blog might look like in the six months before the product is released.

Corporate marketing teams are often a bit afraid to enter the world of corporate blogging. They read reports of mobs of bloggers attacking CBS or Kryptonite and fear for the lives of their brands in the wild frontier that is the blogosphere. Companies are also afraid of creating a huge mistake such as the Juicyfruit blog. I wanted to create a good example for corporate marketers to show how a company can try to connect consumers with information about the products they care about.

I chose iRobot because they fulfill every child’s dream with robots that do your chores. Machines with a mind of their own also introduce a variety of problems for consumers who might hold off buying the product due to a lack of information about how the robot well perform in a unique home environment. I think a blog can solve a lot of these problems and put a person behind a company and its products.

I created a fictional blog based on facts from the initial announcement of the Scooba in May until it became available for pre-order earlier this month. Topics include introducing the product and its features, pointers to magazine articles with photographs and more information, product video demonstrations, and interviews with key product team members.

Almost the entire first page of Google results for “Scooba” is full of blog content.

I have no association with iRobot Corporation but I hope you enjoy the example blog. I sent iRobot an e-mail inviting them to check out the new blog and even take it over as they move towards launch.

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Amazon receives customer reviews patent

Amazon.com received U.S. Patent number 6,963,848 this week for “methods and system of obtaining consumer reviews.” Amazon has the full purchase data for an item and can determine when a user has enough experience to review the product. The patent covers the solicitation of a review and what metrics might be used to determine the right time to solicit a review. The patent was originally filed over five and a half years ago in March 2000 and seems to be focused on better competing with a site such as Epinions.com.

Some interesting snippets:

  • The predetermined amount of time may be independent of the length of the book or the type of book.
  • The predetermined amount of time may be greater for a relatively longer book or for a non-fiction work, as opposed to fictional work.
  • The review request may be sent or presented specifically on weekends or holidays, when people are more likely to have free time to provide such reviews.
  • If the customer has previously ordered a new book on the average of once a month and/or previously submitted reviews an average of one month after ordering a book, then a review request may be sent to the customer one month after the purchase or delivery of a new book.
  • The merchant or other review collector can identify and verify that the review comes from an actual purchaser or user of the item being reviewed.
  • A reward or incentive may be offered to further encourage the customer to provide a review.
  • The reminder or request may be presented to the customer when the customer visits certain web sites, such as a web site associated with the merchant which sold the item to the customer.

Sending reminders to customers based on their visits to partner websites was the biggest surprise to me. Perhaps Amazon is conducting some behavioral targeting beyond their own sites.

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Outlook 12 RSS support in latest beta

The latest version of Office, 12.0.3111.1010, has hit the peer-to-peer networks and developer Alexander Gorlach has posted his first impressions and detailed screenshots of the subscription and reading interface.

Microsoft throttles the feed update rate and respects the TTL element. Users can override this update limit which could be pretty scary as RSS updates are currently integrated with the standard send/receive function along with e-mail and most e-mail is checked every 5 minutes or so.

Outlook 12 also supports the ability to download all enclosures for a subscription, regardless of the file type. Enclosures can deliver some nasty payloads to the desktop. Hopefully Microsoft will treat enclosures with the same caution as e-mail attachments and raise some red flags for potentially harmful content.

It’s beta software, the bits are not final, but it’s interesting to watch.

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Maps, Microsoft Live, and Xbox 360

I recorded a new podcast tonight with Om Malik covering the big news in the technology industry over the past week. We focused on mapping technologies, mobile phone use, and Microsoft’s new online strategy. Om and I hope to continue covering the latest technology news each week. You can subscribe to my enclosures feed to always receive the latest episode of a yet unnamed series.

The audio file of our discussion lasts for 19 minutes and 39 seconds and is a 9.1 MB download.

I hope you enjoy. Please leave comment or ask questions directly on this post or contact me.

Topics discussed:

  1. Flash-powered Yahoo! Maps
  2. Flash on mobile devices
  3. Google Local for mobile powered by J2ME.
  4. Windows Live Local
  5. Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie memos.
  6. Windows Mobile 5
  7. Xbox 360

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Full text of Microsoft executive memos about service offerings

Dave Winer just posted the full text of memos sent by Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie to Microsoft executives announcing the company’s new services strategy.

Both executives are very frank about Microsoft’s failure to properly capitalize on the latest online trends, including many technologies pioneered by Microsoft. Ray Ozzie encourages updates in MSN and Windows Update to “better serve a broad range of highly-influential early adopters.” The entire plan is not yet complete, but corporate executives are working towards a December 15 deadline to outline next steps and product revisions.

Thanks Dave for tracking down these documents and taking a risk by placing them on your server for the world to see.

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Podcasts I listen to

A lot of people think of podcasts as uninteresting audio recordings of someone talking to themselves. Not true! I want to share with you some of my favorite podcasts I subscribe to and listen to at least semi-regularly. I manage my subscriptions and downloads through iTunes. Podcasts is time shifted audio making existing programs available when I want and where I want and enabling new content niches where radio might never go.

  1. On the Media, a New York public radio program about the media industry including newspapers, radio, television, and online media such as websites and blogs. On the Media is released every Friday around 6 p.m. San Francisco time and does not air on local radio until 3 p.m. on Sunday. Downloading this program allows me to listen to the show anytime over the weekend.
  2. NPR Technology, a summary of technology stories from across the NPR network. The weekly show comes out on Wednesdays and lasts about half an hour, and is good material for my walk to work in the mornings.
  3. Coverville, cover songs from all over the world and across all genres. I first started listening at episode 82 and its Disney cover songs. Oddities such as techno versions of Disney tunes had me hooked.
  4. CocoaRadio is all about developing in Objective-C for Mac OS X. Every episode makes me want to start coding new apps for Tiger, the latest version of the Mac operating system. Blake Burris interviews Mac developers from all over the world and talks about their development process, background, and products.

I usually discover new podcasts by word-of-mouth or through links from the hundreds of weblogs I read daily.

If podcasts are new to you, try out a few in your favorite topic area and you may be surprised at what you find!

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Designing the right customer experience

Bain & Company recently surveyed 362 firms and found that 80 percent believed they provided exceptional customer service while only 8 percent of their customers agreed with the firm’s perceptions. Their findings are summarized in “Tuning In to the Voice of Your Customer” in the October issue of Harvard Management Update. Bain found “the ultimate test of any company’s delivery lies in what customers tell others. The best companies find ways to tune in to customers’ voices every day.” I found the article very in-tune with blogging and customer engagement, promoting not only high profit customers but also high profits from the reach of company advocates.

Customer advocacy can be summarized as a net promoter score, calculated as the percentage of customers who would recommend a company (the promoters) minus the percentage that would urge friends to stay away (the detractors).

Some of the advice mentioned is to empower front line employees to talk to their customers and know their needs so they may develop new products and methods to increase profits from each customer as well as that customer’s satisfaction and connection with their purchase.

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