Are Blogs Really The Next Big Thing?
Maybe it began with The Cluetrain Manifesto, and maybe it didn’t. In any case, that book has turned out to be even more prophetic than Tom Peters. If you haven’t read either, you should. Anyway, between databases and blogs, the days of the brochureware website are numbered. I’ll talk about databases in the future. Let’s talk about blogs. Blogs really are the Next Big Thing, and you should have one. Maybe even more than one.
Grassroots Marketing
Blog is short for weblog. The format is simple. You have the date and time of posting, usually a title for the post, and the text of the post. Nearly always, people who read your blog have the option to leave comments and interact with you—and that’s where the marketing magic happens. You probably have seen this type of online journal sections in websites, recently.
The idea here is frequent, personal posts. Not corpo-marketing-speak. A human voice. The real people of the company. Very few big businesses can do this successfully, but free agents, small, and medium businesses can have a successful blog strategy that humanizes the company and maximizes relationship capital a business has with its Clients. Think of it as grassroots marketing. Even more amazing things can be done with RSS (Real Simple Syndication), but that’s coming up in Part Two.
Yeah, But What Does It Do?
With a blog, you can provide fresh information to your Clients and to potential Clients. Doing this frequently (if not regularly) keeps the relationship with your Clients warm and alive. Here is a short sample list of how blogs may be used:
- Company announcements and news updates
- Telling important myth and brand-building stories about how you solved a problem or pulled off a super-cool project
- Regular updates to restaurant menus and specials
- Regular updates for scheduled events, like entertainment or classes
- Create buzz for a new product or service
- And there are many more!
Okay, But How Do I Do It? Is It Complicated?
Not at all. If you can write and send an email, you can blog (yes, it’s a verb and a noun). There are many easy-to-use tools on the web to get you started if all you want is just a simple single page blog that is nothing but the blog, like Blogger. However, most companies will need to have the blog (or blogs) integrated into a larger site, often one that is already used for ecommerce. You can have a blog added to an existing site you’ve already had for a while. Integrating a blog into an existing site is probably not something you can do yourself without technical know-how. Just as you probably had somebody create your website for you, you’ll need to have somebody create and integrate your blog for you. If this is something you are interested in, and want to learn more about it, please contact me and we’ll discuss how a blog can benefit your business.
Blogging Tools and Resources
Blogger: Free account and hosting, easy to use, some features.
TypePad: Paid account and hosting, easy to use, many features.
Moveable Type: Pay for product, install yourself, complex install, easy to use, very highly configurable.
WordPress: Free product, install yourself, easy install, easy to use, very highly configurable.
There are many more, but the above are by far the most popular among bloggers, and you will find a great deal of helpful information on the web for using them. For what it’s worth, I use WordPress, and I liked its easy installation. I have no connection or endorsement deal with WordPress in any way.
