Analysts should let vendor AR teams know that they want AR blogs

It’s a classic chicken-and-egg situation: AR is not using blogs until analysts say they will read AR blogs, but analysts are wanting AR to start blogs but not asking them to which means AR postpones launching a blog… You get the idea.

Last week at IDC Directions in San Jose, analyst Rachel Happe (bio, blog, Twitter) stated in one of her presentations and in private conversations that she wishes that more vendors would use social media like blogs to interact with her. It is true that Rachel covers social media and thus has a predisposition toward it.  However, her comments were more around “I’m so busy and get so many e-mails that going to a blog is more efficient.”

Rachel is not alone in being deluged with e-mails and v-mails. When we chat with analysts, they are expressing interest in a well written, targeted AR blogs as a tool to potentially help with the flood of vendor information and interaction requests. Alas, when we ask if they told AR professionals they deal with about their interest in AR blogs the analyst invariably says “Uh, hmm, no.” Come on folks, here is a missed opportunity due to a failure to communicate.

SageCircle Technique:

• Analysts should drop an e-mail to AR teams indicating that they will subscribe to AR blogs
• In the e-mail, analysts should indicate what sort of information and frequency they would like
• Analysts are requested to forward any ideas – via email to SageCircle or leaving a comment here – about what would make a good AR blog

Bottom Line: One quick and easy way to get more AR teams blogging is for analysts to let AR teams know that they will read blogs if the right content exists.

Question: Analysts – Have you told AR teams you would like them to blog? What types of information would you find useful?  AR teams – Have you asked your analysts if they would read a blog if available?

Are you thinking about experimenting with social media? SageCircle can Help – Social media represents new opportunities and challenges to AR teams. SageCircle can help AR teams by:

• Providing on-site or distance learning sessions to get AR teams up to speed on social media and how it might be adopted
• Acting as a sounding board as you brainstorm how to add social media to the AR tool box
• Advising on how to develop a pilot program to experiment with social media
• Playing the role of analyst in social media experiments and providing critiques of how the experiment went

SageCircle strategists understand your opportunities, challenges and priorities because we have been AR practitioners and executives as well as industry analysts and AR researchers. SageCircle emphasizes the use of phone-based inquiry through its Advisory Service, which is your lifeline when you need timely access to an AR and analyst expert to exploit an opportunity or mitigate a problem. Advisory is available through an annual “all you can eat” contract or blocks of two or five hours “by the drink.” Click here to learn more about our advisory services.

Call 650-274-8309 or e-mail info (at) sagecircle dot com for more information. Also follow Carter’s commentary www.twitter.com/carterlusher to get a feel for how information is now being transmitted using micro-blogging.