On Blogger Brand Evangelists

I was talking with some PR folks about blogging policies recently and one of them asked pointedly “what is Robert Scoble’s job?” Before I could even respond, someone else in the room chimed in with, “he’s one of Microsoft’s 'brand evangelists'.” There’s always one in the group.  Conceptually speaking, it’s hard to argue with that, I follow Robert’s stuff just like everyone else and he is indeed becoming increasingly synonymous with the Microsoft brand, at least amongst us bloggers.

The conversation continued and the next question was naturally along the lines of “well, how do you know if bloggers, like Scoble, are actually making an impact?” There’s always one in the group. Seriously, it’s a difficult question. I immediately started pointing at a variety of complicated metrics (e.g., Technorati cosmos, Bloglines readership, anecdotal evidence, etc.), and while I think I answered the question sufficiently, I personally didn’t feel like I had a solid response for this one.

After the conversation I returned to my desk and started trolling Scobleizer to see if this was something he had previously addressed – little did I know that the answer to this question was actually on Jeremy Zawodny’s Blog.

Jeremy is arguably one of Yahoo’s biggest brand evangelists, or better yet technical evangelists, and over the weekend he posted, err, posed a simple question: "Does reading my blog affect your perception of Yahoo?"

“This has been a repeated source of discussion and some debate among some folks at work as well as bloggers at a few other companies. So I figure I'll just ask the simple questions here--in this very unscientific self-selecting and ultimately meaningless forum. My goal is to get a bit more understanding how my writing about my job, workplace, and employer matters.”

Jeremy’s post elicited responses from some 50 readers, most of which said yes, his writing has had a measurable impact on their perception of Yahoo – it just required someone to ask the question. No cross linking figure, trackback total or subscriber number can complete with a person simply saying yes, you’ve made a difference in my perception. Perhaps it’s a broad assumption on my part, but I can’t imagine Scoble’s readers would respond much differently.

For what it’s worth, it’s an insightful read and I’d encourage companies of all sizes to start looking for ways they can follow Microsoft and Yahoo’s lead and begin identifying and supporting their own brand evangelists...