GetFeedback is an online survey tool. But the company has taken great pains to make sure that the service is easier for end users to work with when they provide answers. Some of the biggest brands in the world like SalesForce, Virgin, Facebook and others use GetFeedback as a way to learn more about their users and customers.
If you’re in business, you know the value in getting feedback from your customers. During my early days in the business world I used to do a lot of reading and would make a lot of assumptions about customers – what they liked and even who they were. This is fine to a point, but those assumptions can get skewed without the right information.
That’s where surveys can come in handy. They can have immediate feedback for something you’re working on right now, but surveys are useful for gaining insight that can be used in the future too. I think it’s good always to be asking your customers questions to learn about them. The better you can understand your customer the better you’ll be able to provide products and services to current customers and for finding new customers.
But enough about that.
GetFeedback has a business blog and we’re going to look at some of the good things they’re doing with their blog.
Let’s get into it.
1. Hiring
As of this writing the latest post up on the GetFeedback Blog is one about a few new positions they have open. The post is pretty basic, but it doesn’t have to be anything crazy or special. I think the company blog can be about a few different things. It’s about helping your target customers with their industry-related questions. But it’s also about sharing a few details about the business. This helps build a relationship with readers.
And some readers are probably a good fit for joining the team. So it makes sense to publish this kind of post when you open up new positions on the team.
2. Company Announcements
Hiring is a type of company announcement, but there are a few other posts on the GetFeedback Blog that also fall into this category. There is a post about how the product integrates with SalesForce and Desk.com and another about how the functionality changed for multiple users. The company blog is a good place to make these types of announcements.
Many large brands use their blog as kind of their official source of news. Even Tiger Woods uses his blog (and sometimes his Facebook page) to make official announcements. This way the rest of the industry news sources can cite his website and blog, which builds the site’s authority.
3. Answering Business-Specific Questions
It’s great to see GetFeedback answering customer questions. They do this with the post on building surveys for people all over the world that use different languages. Right in the introduction of the post they mention that it was common for companies to ask about building a survey that needed to be built in multiple languages, but then parsed back into the native language for interpretation with all the responses together.
We’ve found that answering questions is one of the best blogging strategies. It attracts traffic from just about all sources – search, social, email, etc. The idea is that you answer questions your audience is looking for and they’ll find it useful no matter what channel they visit from.
We find that there are two types of questions. The first is a business-specific or business-level questions. This would be close to the question about multi-language surveys. It’s directly about GetFeedback’s product. Industry-level questions are more general and are the second type of question. They might ask something like, How Do I Get More Response From My Surveys or How Do I Figure Out Where To Advertise Online?
Find the questions yours audience is asking – both business and industry – and answer them on your blog. You could even use a service like GetFeedback to find the questions.
4. Commenting On Industry Trends
In a post on Voice Of The Customer (VOC), GetFeedback provides their commentary on an industry trend or popular industry topic. This is similar to answering questions. Your audience is likely reading about industry news. Like anybody, they’re busy and they don’t always have time to git into all the details. They see a headline and maybe a few stories. What can really help them out is commentary on what that industry trend means for them and what they need to do.
Anybody can report the news, but your customers are looking for more. They look to you as a leader in the industry; as someone that is immersed in the workings of the industry. They want you to tell them what industry trends mean and how they should react. You can do that on your blog to provide real value to customers.
5. A Couple Suggestions
I really like the GetFeedback Blog. I like the simple design. There are no distractions on the page, but it’s branded like the rest of the online presence of GetFeedback. This way a new visitor can get a feel for the brand.
Posts come in about 1-3 per month. Some months have more and some months have less. What I would suggest is maybe adding one more post a month that focuses on industry-level questions. Find something the target audience wants to know that’s not directly about the GetFeedback software and provide the answer.
I would also find a way to talk more about other complementary software products and partner products. GetFeedback does some of this, which is great. You can share new apps with customers that can help them with their business strategies. And by promoting those apps you can hopefully get them to re-share your post, which will send their followers to your post.
Conclusion
There is a lot to like on the GetFeedback Blog. It seems like a great source for official company information. They answer customer questions and provide regular company updates. They’re good with the frequency and it seems like it would have a good number of readers. If you’re looking at starting a business blog the GetFeedback Blog would be a good one to use as a model.