Photo by Grazie, Davvero

Robert Scoble recently stated why enterprise software isn’t sexy enough to cover on mainstream technology blogs.

He offers two arguments:

• The majority of tech blog readers will never be in the position to buy enterprise software.
• Stories about business software, due to a disconnect with their readership, don’t produce meaningful traffic for the blog’s advertisers.

He then asks what can be done to make business software sexy enough to talk about.

Here’s my take contribution to the discussion:

For the bloggers:

If a large software company is giving day-to-day end-users the cold shoulder to schmooze with the market’s decision makers, then they aren’t owed any organic word-of-mouth.

As Scoble points out, anecdotally (but my experience agrees), most workers on a company’s front lines will probably trend toward hating their current business software when asked. In fairness, I also doubt the majority of those workers are offering management a request for any specific alternatives.

This is one area where technology bloggers could be doing a valuable public service, by informing technology workers about the good ideas coming out of the business software market. Make people say “That is much better than the crap I have to use every day!”.

Even if these tech workers are disempowered, and feel their petitions to management are futile, the situation will never improve if the only discussion going on is paid for with multi-million dollar advertising budgets.

For the enterprise software developers:

Assuming for the moment that you want more organic word-of-mouth (and who doesn’t):

• Hire and empower enthusiastic developers who bring fresh perspectives to your problem domain. Look for developers who have first-hand experience as users of software like yours. These people are going to put more thought into the problem you’re trying to solve for people. If time is money, then efficiency is time. Time and money are sexy. 12 keystrokes for common functionality is not.

• Listen to your end-users. These are the people who have to use your application every day. You might think it’s more important to appease the people making the current buying decisions, but today’s helpdesk worker may very well be tomorrow’s influential startup founder. Technology enthusiasts like this attract a large following and they love to talk about what they’re discovering or using. Don’t outsource your suggestion box – let your actual developers connect with the end-users through online communities and feedback portals. Two-way communication is sexy. Megaphones, press releases and moats are not.

• Make an effort to adopt current technology. A lot of technology bloggers, developers and consumers would love to talk about a behemoth like you using some of the same tools that they are (maybe even some tools they wrote!). This doesn’t mean you have to offer an iPhone interface or rewrite everything in Ruby. There are plenty of opportunities for a big tech player like you to contribute to communal libraries which meet 90% of your needs already. Open source libraries and tools are sexy. Golf course nepotism is not.

• Be approachable for technology enthusiasts. Look at Sun Microsystems’ Startup Essentials and Amazon’s EC2/S3 web services. Those strategies build a relationship with non-captive users and let them figure out what you’re all about. Those people broadcast over blog, IM, text or a good old-fashioned chat over drinks. I trust what my peers tell me about you a lot more than I trust an advertising testimonial from the CEO of Megacorporation, Inc. Reaching out with downloadable demos and startup friendly options is sexy. Hiding your entry-level pricing and product demos is not.

You might want to hurry,  business software users are trying new things too.