Jumping into the Blogosphere

A few months ago, I was in a marketing meeting when the discussion turned to how our Internet strategy should include some sort of social networking presence. Well, we have to, right? Even if you superficially scan the news about the Web, you are bombarded by social networking this and social graph that. I am seduced by buzzwords as much as the next guy. So, should we do this because we “have to”? Will it truly offer some commercial advantage to our company?

I decided to try and find out.

First, a bit of background. I am the Co-President of a middling sized direct marketing company. I have worked at this company for some 27 years, coming in through the technology side. In 1980 I was hired to get their $10,000 computer to do something (anything!) of value for the company. That seems a long time ago. When I started with the company, there were about 10 employees and the annual gross was about $250K. In 2007, we had about 110 employees and did about $20 million. We have three major channels, Catalog and Call Center, Internet and Chain Retail.

So, how was I going to understand this whole social networking thing? First of all, I was lucky to stumble (literally, using Stumbleupon keyed to Marketing) a prolific blogger named Jeremiah Owyang. Jeremiah’s Blog is at Web Strategy by Jeremiah. Following some of his advice, I boldly ventured in the Blogosphere.

After signing up for just about every blogging service I could find, I have settled on this WordPress site as my “home” blog.

I’ll try to post here on a semi-regular basis. Will anyone be listening? Perhaps. I guess that is not the important thing. (It better not be, I doubt that I am going to have much of an audience….) This will serve as a journal of what I have found on this whole phenomenon of social networking and how it might be applied to our overall strategy.