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238 Managing Customers Through Economic Cycles

of best practices and the identification of experts and skill
sets regardless of geographic and organizational boundaries
were part of the successful results. Wikis, blogs, and RSS
feeds were all part of the enabling technology. To extend
the capabilities of this knowledge sharing, they employed a
customizable and security-enhanced interface.

1. Quality of Content (value-add) 7

2. Quality of Conversation 7

3. On Employee’s terms 8

4. Virality/Advocacy 7

Comparisons

It is quite helpful to look at different social marketing
initiatives relative to the distinct approaches and their
resulting outcomes. This is a comparison of three: Amex’s
Open Forum, Advanta’s Ideablog, and QuickBooks
Community.

Amex’s Open Forum

This essentially is a business forum and resource directory.
To heighten the appeal, American Express added posts from
several prominent bloggers on topical small business sub-
jects, e.g. John Battelle’s Searchblog, Anita Campbell’s Small
Biz Trends. They have had a reasonable uptake – 15,400
members, and a monthly traffic of about 55,000 unique vis-
itors – up five times from a year ago.

1. Quality of Content (value-add) 7

2. Quality of Conversation 6

3. On Consumer’s terms 6

4. Virality/Advocacy 6