Blade Watch

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2007/11/16.7.shtml

Apple, which is renown for its marketing, has failed to engage its customers on a more personal level, doesn’t have a blog and tries to sue its bloggers, according to Andy Beal at Marketing Pilgrim on Friday. Nike and Dell do a much better job of social networking with customers.

In a nutshell, Apple doesn’t “get” social media. That’s because Apple doesn’t have to. In any Internet situation in which there’s a support issue or problem, Apple can sit back and let its minions, surfeit with passion, do the job for them.

“At the recent BlogWorld Expo, I discussed two companies that ‘get’ social media and one that doesnít. The two that get it were Nike and Dell,” Mr. Beal wrote. “Nikeís excellent community efforts ñ especially Nike+ ñ and Dellís efforts with forums and blogs are helping both companies join online conversations. Both companies are benefiting from … higher sales … and better stakeholder relations…”

On the other hand, the one that doesn’t get it is Apple. Apple’s supporters are left to engage each other and maybe a few non-believers on the Internet, and Apple is seen as distant and detached by both camps.

Check out this interesting post about blogs and Apple. I can understand both sides of the equation, Apple needs to protect it’s revenues, it’s corporate identity and it’s shareholders. That said, reaching out to the blog world could be a real enabler for them. Not only could they get real feedback, they are missing out on analysis good and bad, not to mention conversation of their products. I remain a large Apple fan, but going forward as Apple become more mainstream, how does the company remain engaged with its user community, keep evangelizing the Apple message and evolving the products. By engaging you can ‘control your message’, you can respond to negative commentary (if you see it necessary), you can contain negative news, you can directly connect with your audience, in essence to remove the emotion, the examples being the switch adverts that Apple made, think how cool that would be in a blog – I’m doing this with my Mac, this is why I’m using the Mac, what do I want from a Mac and how have Apple responded to this. Understand that branding sells a product, but the community re-enforces it, that ‘car company x had problems with model a’, might just sway me away from a product, from a brand, keeping your existing customers is so much cheaper than gaining new ones, and a great way of developing our customer base.

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