Most of you reading this blog have no idea who Vince Ferraro is.  If you do it's either because you're in IT or because you've been following my career at HP.

When I started at HP, one of my new responsibilities was to help take the LaserJet blog to the next level. To their credit the groundwork had already been done and I was able to step in, add a little more rigor and best practices and watch the blog continue to grow.

Vince Ferraro was HP's most prominent blogger. So why have you not heard of him? Probably because you, like me, are a marketer. While Vince was a VP of Marketing at HP he is probably more well known among IT network professionals not social networking marketers.

Vince authored the LaserJet blog and covered all things LaserJet. His most popular posts were related to issues people had printing with Vista.

Because of the these posts, Vince's blog was featured in the book Groundswell as an example of how to address customers on the Web. The LaserJet blog really lead the way for HP by demonstrating the tangible value blogging has with building customer relationships, SEO and Analyst Relations.

I found working with Vince's blog very interesting. Vince's success wasn't about having hundreds of thousands of daily readers on his site. When I tried to pin him down on who was his audience was he'd tell me: "LaserJet customers."

Early on I struggled with this.  That's simultaneously such a broad but narrow focus.  If he went larger, say tech marketers, he'd have so much more *success*. If he focused it on IT professionals and brought in our engineers to guest blog, he'd probably get better pick up.

Ultimately though the LaserJet printer is a tough product to market. Our customers are very diverse and that gray/beige box sitting in the corner isn't very sexy.  But by focusing on our customers Vince's blog had all the success he wanted. We worked to provide valuable information to our customers (and the analysts we knew were reading) and as such Vince's blog has been the #1 HP blog (twice as many unique visitors as the next most popular blog).

The blog was so successful that our own PR teams would pitch us along with the traditional media and analysts.

I have since moved on to a new group and Vince has now retired. I hope whoever picks up the torch will continue what Vince started.

Good luck Vince.

You can also read Jim Lyons farewell post here.