Microsoft Social Media Outreach Case Study
Last week, I had the pleasure moderating a panel/case study at the BlogHer Business ’08 conference here in New York City, where I interviewed three prominent Microsoft bloggers. The panelists were Ani Babaian, Sara Ford and Ariel Stallings, and we discussed how their blogging helps to build a bridge between the world of corporate social media and their own personal technology passions.
I really enjoyed getting to know these three very dynamic women and learning how their efforts are helping Microsoft add a new dimension to the corporate perception.
Ani Babaian is a senior product manager with the LiveSearch team at Microsoft and she blogs on a variety of topics with a focus on SEO.
Sara Ford is a program manager for codeplex.com, Microsoft’s open source project hosting site. She is a hardcore techie and blogs about the Microsoft product that she works with, interacts with the open source community, and participates in the conversations to help users find solutions to their issues.
Ariel Stallings is a marketing manager with staffing marketing. It’s her job to convince you that working at Microsoft is cool. She profiles microsoft employees by focusing on the diversity and life style of the Microsoft employees…their fun side…their personal side.
Each woman shared how their efforts helps build Microsoft brand equity. Ani and Sara, with their passion for technology, do it by engaging with the user groups that use Microsoft products and help them deal with issues. Ariel, does it by highlighting the personal side of Microsoft.
The conclusion was that the return on investment (ROI) of hiring a blogger is invaluable. Ariel says, “When comparing the amount of media coverage and the number of inbound links and the number of conversations that her blog posts generate vs what your return would be on $100,000 flash websites marketing initiatives…for God’s sake, hire a blogger!”
Read the full Microsoft social media outreach case study.
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Nelly, it’s really great to see Microsoft reaching out to its various communities this way. Accessibility and transparency are becoming such big parts of how consumers are valuing brands. Thanks for sharing this.
Cheers.
David Alston
Radian6