Blogging Builds Brands Blogging is one of the hottest trends on the net. A blog (short for "web log") is a web-based diary where the author can ruminate on whatever strikes his or her fancy. The blogger may share photos, poetry, political views, gossip, industry trends, business advice, or the latest on their personal life. By definition, blogs are organized in reverse chronological order. Many are updated daily. They can have one or multiple authors, such as a community blog. One in five teens between 12 and 17 maintains a blog, according to a US survey. But blogs aren't just for idiosyncratic rants by awkward adolescents. Seemingly everybody is getting into blogging - celebrities like William Shatner, gurus like Tom Peters, and world-renowned journalists like Dave Barry. And yes, the business world too is embracing blogs - from corporate giants like General Motors to small but stand-out businesses like the Savile Row tailor Thomas Mahon. I've caught the bug too; I blog on emarketing and search engine optimization at www.StephanSpencer.com. Why are people reading blogs? Marketing guru and celebrated business blogger Seth Godin reckons there are three types of business blogs: "news blogs" which follow the latest happenings in a particular topic area, "writer's blogs" where the blogger mostly riffs and pontificates, and "our blogs" which are merely fire-starters for conversations carried on within the blog by the community of blog readers. News blogs keep readers up to date with news and current events in their areas of expertise or interest, only pointing out the best or most interesting stuff. Thus, bloggers whom you trust and resonate with can be a real timesaver by acting as a personal filter, cutting through the information glut. Writers' blogs stimulate the reader's thinking and challenge his or her preconceptions. "Our blogs" provide the reader with the impetus to join a conversation on issues that the reader cares about. In effect, it's participatory journalism. To blog, or not to blog? Consider, for example, Pepsi's "Pop the Music" Superbowl ad. The commercial inadvertently made a star out of Mandy Amano, a woman who appeared in the commercial for only a few seconds. Geeks the world over swooned over her. One of them rose to the occasion and started a blog in her honor, called That Pepsi Girl (http://thatpepsigirl.blogspot.com/). The blog is a testament to the power of the consumer to initiate fads and influence their spread. Where was Pepsi through all this? Not in the blogosphere, that's for sure. But they should have been. How about dotcom brands? They too seem reticent to join in. For instance, wine.com does not have a blog. Therefore, wine enthusiasts flock to wine blogs like Vinography for their daily dose of news and opinion, rather than a wine.com blog. Where does wine.com figure in to Vinography's many hundreds of posts? Unfortunately, a mere four times, and those few mentions aren't all favorable. A wine.com blog, full of passion for wine and devoid of disguised advertorial, would over time develop a loyal following and be in a position to influence their readers' buying decisions. Here are three reasons to add blogging to your own marketing arsenal:
But can blogging have a positive impact on your bottom line? Absolutely, if it's done right! Just consider the success story of the Voltaic Backpack, as described in an article in Fortune magazine earlier this year. Entrepreneur Shayne McQuade received an early sample of his company's solar-powered backpack that can charge the wearer's cell phone and other gadgets. He asked a friend - a blogger who runs a blog called Treehugger - to blog about it, and he did. The mention on Treehugger, being just a small blog with a small readership, didn't by itself cause a huge word-of-mouth epidemic to spread. However, another blogger higher up the blogging "ecosystem" picked up the story from Treehugger and blogged about the backpack on his Cool Hunting blog, which was then read by Gizmodo, one of the most popular blogs on the Internet for cool stuff and gadgets. Once the backpack was featured on Gizmodo, the orders literally poured in! Here are a few more examples of blogs that have driven customers, interest and sales:
A key point for brand marketers: word-of-mouth plays a critical role in people's purchase decisions both online and offline. People look to mavens that they trust for product recommendations. If you could be in that influential position of one of those mavens that they trust because they follow your blog, then you can influence their positions/choices. But also there is a real risk in not being part of the conversation. Case in point: Kryptonite Locks. It was discovered that their bike locks could be picked with an ordinary Bic pen, and this discovery made its way through the blogosphere while Kryptonite remained silent. The negative word-of-mouth continued to escalate until finally Kryptonite was forced to act, albeit too late to effectively contain the damage. By the end of it, it cost the Ingersoll-Rand subsidiary $10 million in recall costs - over a third of its annual revenue. Seth Godin said at a MarketingProfs' Thought Leaders Summit on business blogging: "What I think blogs can do that's really powerful, is change the culture of an idea and the way a corporate sees itself. It's about very specific vertical groups listening to a human being within a company so that they can hear the story behind that company - the story that the corporate needs and wants to tell. And if the stories are good and the ideas are worth spreading, they'll spread." Do you have a story to tell? Getting started
Blogging is a tool, one that requires skill and practice to be wielded effectively. Debbie Weil described blogging well when she said at the above-mentioned Thought Leaders Summit: "It's a way to tell a story with a voice, with an opinion, with context, with links to others. It's immediate. It's fresh. It's happening now. A lot of this is not obvious to companies getting into blogging for the first time." Exciting times ahead Blogging is becoming an established communications channel in business. Business blogger and author Shel Israel predicts that the power of people to reach real humans inside the corporation will have a liberating effect. In the end, he says, marketing departments as we know them will be reconfigured to some degree. Steve Rubel, PR guru and author of the Micropersuasion blog, predicts that blogging will eventually bring the end of corporate-speak because it whets people's appetite for things that are written in a human voice. The heavy corporate style - like "such-and-such a company today announced." is going to disappear because people want a human voice with credibility. BL Ochman, of whatsnextonline.com, points out that one of the things so annoying about the Internet today is going to websites and you can't find a human anywhere. In the blogosphere, you find humans. And while a lot of retailers may pull back, asking "what would we do with all that feedback" or "what are we going to do when all those people start responding to our blogs", some may seize this opportunity and discover something very exciting and powerful - namely, that their words really can have an impact. BL says, "That's going to be one of the bigger changes that companies will have to deal with, and it's a very positive change that's going to come about, all because of blogging!" Contributor: Stephan Spencer Stephan Spencer is founder and president of Netconcepts (http://www.netconcepts.com), a 10 year-old web agency specializing in search engine optimization, e-commerce, and website design, as well as email marketing through its gravityMail (http://www.gravitymail.com) division. In addition to being a sought-after speaker and contributing writer, Stephan is an avid blogger (http://www.stephanspencer.com). Email: sspencer@netconcepts.comWebsite: www.netconcepts.com
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