Christine's Blog Chronicles

Testing links

I"m trying to test to see if a link is automatic.   http://www.quicken.com

Testing some options to clarify this is Typepad, not Intuit

I've made a couple of changes to the layout of this blog to make sure it's super clear that this blog is hosted by Typepad and not Intuit.  Jill and Peter can check it out.  A couple learnings from today:

1) Powered by Typepad can be displayed no problem and there's a link to Typepad.com

2) There's a setting to allow anonymous comments and therefore, not require name and email.  The site is a bit confusing to administer which is why I just found this setting.

3) I wrote some text and added HTML to the "about page".  We can have text about this being hosted by Typepad and have links to terms of service and privacy.  We can draft and add to Quicken & RPM's site as well as those coming soon.

4) As mentioned, we can default to "comments off".  Of course, an author can override that on each post.

Progress in the last month

My goodness, how did a month fly by. My last post was 5/10. That's terrible. I suppose since I work on Infrastructure for all of the version 1 products for QPFG and "blogs" are one of 6 programs, I shouldn't be too hard on myself. Still, we made a bunch of progress which I want to share.

Quicken Rental is moving along.  Theresa did her 2nd post and I'm hoping Suzanne will too. Quicken Rental is experimenting with comments turned off and trying to drive all commentary to the forum so there can be a discussion.  It should be interesting to see how this works. The good news is that we're launching and learning with real data, not just assuming what works and doesn't. The challenge is that there's a few more steps for each post to make that work and I hope it doesn't turn folks off to blogging.  Check out http://quickenrental.typepad.com 

The Quicken Personal Finance team is supposed to go live on 6/15. They slipped from launched 6/1 due to John's child being born and FY06 planning. Ok, legitimate but I'm hoping to see some posts at http://quicken.typepad.com  soon.

There's some other movement which I can't talk about yet but soon.  Stay tuned!!!

RPM Blog links...

Quick update. Izzy Abusida rules and got the link to the Blog up on the Quicken Rental Support site live yesterday.  Check it out at https://quickenrental.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/quickenrental.cfg/php/enduser/home.php

The link from the homepage www.quickenrental.com should be live by noon on Friday.   Very exciting. 

So, we beat my personal goal of live by my birthday on Thursday.  Yahoo!  Next up...Quicken. I'm going to set that blog up today so we're sure to beat our 6/1 target. 

RPM is live...

Very exciting update. Suzanne not only posted her content to the RPM blog but she updated this great graphic at the top.  It's super cool. Check it out at quickenrental.typepad.com   By Friday 5/13, Theresa has committed to posting her first post , Izzy is going to try to have the link from the RPM Support site by then and Anna is going to to get the links from the RPM home page. RPM will be alive and kicking.

So, next up is the Quicken blog which we're targeting to have live by Friday June 1st. I'm going to set it up today and discuss with Glenn the update to the Leadership team.  Very exciting. Look at us go!!

Update on Blogs.. Mon 5/9

I thought I'd share that we've made great progress since my last blog update.  In a nutshell, Rental Property Manager's blog is setup and Suzanne is getting ready to add her first post.  Today, we'll discuss how we can get links from the marketing web site and from the support web site. I hope by end of week we can have RPM live and linked.  As for Quicken, we had a great meeting last week discussing content. Glenn and I meet again today to resolve whether we can meet our 6/1 target to be live.  I will update the leadership team on Wed 5/11.  Overall, we're making great progress.

Great progress today.. Thurs 4/28

It's been a great day for the QPFG blog effort.  This morning, I finally sat down and wrote the QPFG Blog Strategy and Launch Plan. It's a 6 page rundown including context (what and why blog), the QPFG Blog Strategy (get driver, identify Blog Chief, Select Technology, Launch and Learn), Guidelines (rough but they're a start) and a summary of the RPM and Quicken blogs (first to launch). For those inside Intuit, contact Christine Rimer if you want a copy of the Plan.

At 10, I had a great meeting with Glenn Tom, the E2E category leader for Quicken. We decided to round up the key Quicken blogger candidates (Glenn, John, Joe Wells, Matt Lindmark and Beth Murphy for the Ambassador program potentially) next week.  Our initial thoughts are to update the Leadership team on May 10th, aim to launch the Quicken blog by June 1st and introduce features and "discoverability content" on July 1st. 

At 11, I met with Chris Repetto from PR. It was another great meeting as he seemed pleased that we were thinking through objectives, putting thought into guidelines and moving quickly but in a thoughtful manner. Chris will join next week's Quicken synch up and he'll help me with ongoing "Blog Brown Bags / Seminars" since it's quite the hot PR topic these days and he had access to a ton of information.

So, next steps

• Get the RPM blog set up Monday 5/2
• Synch up re: Quicken blog strategy / content / players settled on Monday 5/2
• Update Peter's Staff on Tuesday 5/10
• Launch / Link to RPM blog by Thursday 5/12
• Launch Quicken blog by 6/1

It's definitely a work in progress but we're making great headway. Until I blog again...

Legal, PR and other stuff about blogging...

Wow! Blogging is quite the hot topic.  There's a big article in business week about the topic that's being forwarded throughout Intuit and among the bloggers.  I'm meeting with Chris Repetto tomorrow to discuss blogging guidelines, legal stuff, etc. I'm hoping he'll be able to help me get QPFG into the blogging world in a responsible and timely manner. I'd like to be able to get back to Peter and his staff by May 10th (personal goal) with a progress update and launch deliverables. Could we launch RPM blog by my birthday 5/12? Wouldn't that be fun!  Perhaps get Quicken going by the time we move out of the Taurus "Bull" sign on May 20th. I'm going to make that my personal goal since Taurus love practical goals.

Getting Quicken going with Blogs

Tomorrow I meet with Glenn Tom, the End to end category leader for Quicken and we're going to talk about the possibility of a Quicken blog.  I've been working this afternoon on background, guidelines, what we're solving for, etc. to prepare for the discussion. I'm hoping the next step would be for Glenn and I to meet with those Quicken member interested (John Flora and Joe Wells) and start talking about how we could get things off the ground. Wish me luck!

Blogs and RPM

I met with Theresa last week and we talked about Blogs and RPM.  We aren't sure if RPM customers will go read them but we won't know until we try. We thought we could do a 90 day trial. 

Our criteria for success would be..

1. RPM prospects and customers would read the blog. Do we have a target number?
2. We could generate "productive" learnings from our forum.   If we try to share information in the forum right now, it appears we're ignoring the hot topics from folks that aren't happy.  If we post on the blog asking for comments and conversation in the forum, we could potentially learn more.

Next steps...

1. Christine and Theresa to meet Monday 5/2 to discuss setup on typepad. Christine will work on logistics and Theresa will work on first blog post and find one other RPM person interested in participating.