ROI of blogging
If you want to justify blogging (= having meaningful conversations with your customers and stakeholders) as part of your job to your excel-money-addicted boss, show him/her these analyst reports:
The ROI Of Blogging
The “Why” And “How” Of External Blogging Accountability (US$379.00, 15 pages)
Calculating The ROI Of Blogging: A Case Study
A Look At The ROI Of General Motors’ FastLane Blog (US$279.00, 8 pages)
If you don’t have access rights to these articles - and don’t want to pay those hefty fees - check out the main points from the author’s blog: New ROI of blogging report from Forrester.
What is the ROI of S60 blogs?
Frankly, I have no idea. But I’d claim that S60 blogs have already (1) more traffic, (2) more incoming links, (3) better search engine rankings, (4) more people commenting, and most importantly, (5) more constructive conversations than FastLane blog. And the costs have probably been much lower, because Bob Lutz’s is expensive, whereas we S60 bloggers are cheap 
Bottom line: I’d guesstimate that the ROI of S60 blogs has been about 1000%. And most part of this “value” has come from truly listening to people, and from feeding back their feedback to the actual development process.
What do you think the value of S60 blogs has been for Nokia/S60 and the end-users?
I think uou answered it already!
With this S60 blogs, Nokia started to listen to people.
To me it’s very important. It gets me closer to what I truly like. Mobiles, and more specific: Nokia.
It is nice to see you guys listening, but it is difficult to see the results.
I often see you type “I’ll ask the guys that” or “let me tell someone in department ABC about that”
But I never see the results.
I mean it is nice to see you communicating with us users, but I feel it is more for show than for actually connecting with the user base.
Tommi, I have to say I agree that the S60 blog ROI is tremendous. Even if, as Stefan suggests, there’s not immediate results, it’s worth it to me to know that the information is being fed in the right places. I can’t tell you how often I’m using my N73 or E62 and think, why on earth would they have implemented that function like that? Or why would they leave such-and-such out? It’s nice to have a place to feed those questions. And offer feedback.
Nokia has testers all over the place, obviously, but I think it’s a problem when a company doesn’t at least attempt to garner feedback from people who use these devices day-to-day. Testers can test, but then they give the thing back and go on to the next. We’re monetarily invested in your products, and I think if nothing else, having the S60 blogs builds goodwill towards the Nokia and S60 brands, at least in my mind.
Hello Tommi! You know there are two sides of the coin. Maybe You and your boss should also ask: What is the ROI of writing comments for the users? I guess we will see! I do strongly hope, that Nokia strategic planners read these comments (or your summaries) and Listen!
I will judge the ROI of writing to Your blog based on the results, e.g.:
E70 firmware 3.x
FP1- for E series…
Browser update for s60 v3, (remember my question about saving web pages and Nokia strategic alliance with the Finnish paper industry…
etc…
My opinion is that - based on the popularity of your blog - the ROI of your blog now depends on how Nokia is acctually using it!
Please, please, please… Show this to strategic planners!
keep up the great work!
Regards!
Aron
(from an E70…)
Aron, you are spot on, and I will. Although, technically speaking, we don’t have people called as “strategic planners”. There’s a book written about why this is so nowadays:
http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Strategic-Planning-Henry-Mintzberg/dp/0029216052
And just for the record: my boss is way cool about the blog stuff. I was just recommending the abovementioned articles to people who’s bosses are not as open-minded as mine.
Yea Aron pretty much hit the nail on the head. Nice to see the conversation, very nice actually.
What we crave now are results. So far, for the 2 months I’ve been blogging, I’ve seen Nokia make the N80 upgradeable to the N80 Internet Edition.
That was a HUGE boon.
There are so many more things to discuss however. Simple things like why can’t the Nokia engineers spend a quick weekend to make an application that will let us customize our hard keys.
My E61, the email key, I simply don’t use it. It is literally a waste of space on my device.
I reread my first comment and it does sound a bit harsh. Didn’t mean to sound like what you are doing is an act. It isn’t and I welcome your presence on the net, we all do.
Back to what Aron has to say, the ROI of your blog, and all other Nokia blogs, is when customers aka end users can say: “Wow I talked to Nokia about XYZ and they listened to me and gave me a solution.”
I can not tell you how emails I’ve gotten from people thinking I was a Nokia employee and wanting tech support. It’s aggravating, but at the same time it shows me that people do want to connect with people. Not a “submit your idea/complain” web form.
From a second angle, why not tell people what YOU think is cool that Nokia is working on. I know a lot of it is hush hush, but there has to be something that is blogable!