Blogging is a good marketing tool for business
masshightech.com
By Elizabeth Dinan
Mass High Tech
06/16/2003 08:20 AM
Blogs are good for business.
That was the message at Boston’s Weblog Business Strategies conference on June 9, where consensus said today’s bloggers are leading the pack to what will be the next great marketing tool. That is if more people find out what a blog is, then actually start blogging.
A blog is an online, interactive discussion, posted daily in reverse chronological order and written in conversational style. Most are personal blogs, few are business blogs, while all are open to public perusal and participation.
Leading a panel discussion titled, “Strategies and Tips for Business Blogging Success,” John Lawler told a small but enthusiastic group that bloggers are estimated to number between 100,000 and 1.5 million. But he calculates only about 20 percent of the people who’ve heard him preach the gospel of blog knew what the heck he was talking about.
Lawler has spun three businesses out of blogging himself — as a business blog consultant, author of “BlogAnswerMan’s Big Book of Business Blogging” and host of BlogAnswerMan.com, a blog he boasts achieved top 10 search engine status on Google, MSN and Overture within 72 hours of launch.
That’s why he says blog stands for “Better Listings on Google,” one of the reasons businesses should consider blogging as a marketing tool.
Meantime, conference organizer Kathleen Goodwin predicts big things for the power of the biz blog, calling these early stages “like 1987,” while expressing the “sense that it’ll never be like this again.”
Panelist Halley Suitt, author of the blog “Halley’s Comment,” discussed her blog, a mostly personal account which began with the end of her father’s life. She describes its evolution into a “sexy, spicy, saucy” weblog that’s led to her writing a fictionalized story about a corporate weblog gone bad for Harvard Business School, due to be published this fall.
Her blog now leads her nemesis, astronomer Edmond Halley, on a Google search. In fact, Halley’s Comment comes up in the No. 1 position from a Google search of “Halley.”
Don White, director of communications for Piedmont Preferred Properties, used the blog forum to describe how he’s enlisted between 5,000 and 6,000 real estate brokers to blog about their business, a forum he says is cheaper to launch than a Web site and more easily managed.
Meantime, Beverly’s Groove Networks is thought to be the first to publish a corporate blog policy with company president Ray Ozzie posting blog guidelines for employees last August. The Groove blog guidelines include avoiding mention of intellectual property, the suggestion that employees disclaim responsibility for blogging on the company’s behalf, and that Groove “may request that you temporarily confine your website or weblog commentary to topics unrelated to the company.”
Back at the Blog expo, Major Chris Chambers relayed his experience as a blogger for the U.S. Army while soldiering in Afghanistan, by reporting he was careful to “self edit.” Calling the armed forces “risk adverse in terms of public image,” he said Army brass determined a blog would be a good way to “reconnect” with youth.
Already offering a download action game, America’s Army, for this purpose, Chambers’ blog included first-hand accounts of frontline Afghani action from his laptop, accompanied by digital images taken from the window of a military Humvee.
“It was personal to a degree, but always in line with our strategy,” he said. “It seemed like a natural way to connect players of our game with a real person and real experiences. We ran it like a business, but gave it away for free.”
Posting under the pseudonym “Scorpio” for security reasons, Chambers said the Army “looked hard” without success for an American serviceman in Iraq to also blog for the action game. At the other end, the Army connected game players with game developers.
Chambers said the blog was successful in attracting players to the game, evident by an increased number of hits to the site. Dialog indicated they were reaching the demographic they wanted — young males with an interest in the military and guns.
The Army major’s business blog illustrates the potential that for-profit businesses could realize, as did a report from one conference attendee who said he found a paying sponsor for his business blog.
Lawler told attendees they’re leading the non-blogging world by five years.
“We’re so far ahead,” he said. “It’s phenomenal.”
Still, predict experts, blogs started with the tech-savvy audience, will move to the media and next, to business.
With that said, Lawler predicts it’ll be a while before we see a blog for Cheerios. |
