Blogging Tips

The power of blogs is buzz, or conversations and Web links that bounce from blog to blog and gather mass and impact. Companies that use blogs as buzz-building tools are finding substantial readerships of people who avidly want to know what the blogger has to say and respond with comments to every new posting. The best part is that they often spread that message to others within their sphere of influence through blogs, instant messages, or e-mail.

Word of mouth is one of the strongest marketing tools your company can use. For example, a recommendation for a product or service from a trusted friend is more memorable and convincing than the cleverest television ad — and more likely to be turned into action.

What if you had a tool at your disposal that could reach hundreds of people at once who are actually interested in your products or services and appreciate the fact that you’re making information available to them? A Weblog is such a tool. Blogs are all about opening up your knowledge, expertise, processes, and goals to your customers. Done right, they can give back loyalty, goodwill, and valuable feedback.

The blog format is breaking new ground for business by:

• Providing a way to interact with customers
• Being a clearinghouse of information and expertise
• Getting valuable feedback — including criticism — from those who know your products and services best: customers
• Changing public opinion during times of negative attention
• Simplifying and amplifying collaboration between employees

The informal, engaging style and interactive format of blogs make them very attractive for companies looking to change public perception, take part in a dialog begun in the press, correct a mistake, take a position, and get feedback from customers.

Best of all, blogs are a nearly instantaneous publishing format; the software that runs a blog speeds up, instead of slows down, the publication of news and information to your Web site. They’re easy and cheap to set up; from a cost/benefit point of view, blogs are very easy to justify, and results come quickly. For more information on the different blogging software available to you, see Kevin’s post WordPress Alternatives.

Blogs are a great way to keep employees and customers abreast of the latest news faster and more effectively than a traditional company newsletter. They disseminate announcements more quickly than the most centrally placed bulletin board. And they can get you customer feedback more cheaply than any focus group or survey.

But what makes a blog different from any other corporate Web site? A blog is designed around a particular form of publishing: frequent, short updates often using links, accompanied by a corresponding set of comments from readers. Blogs are an organic process, meant to be written and read regularly — even daily — and simply aren’t as “packaged” and controlled as a press release. Their tone is usually informal, almost stream of consciousness. In fact, many bloggers don’t bother to use capital letters or spell-checkers!

For more information on comments and participation from your readers, see my blog post, Start The Blogging Conversation. Although the writing may be free-form, a blog has some common organizational structures that make understanding and participating in the conversation easy for readers. Is your company using a blog to reach their customers?