BlogWhy blog?Wed, September 23, 2009 So here I am with my first blog entry. Why blog? Well I don’t know if you noticed but there is a fundamental change in the way people are communicating these days and it’s called social networking. It’s when people sharing a common interest come together online to build their own virtual community. It’s a marketer’s dream – niche markets of targeted consumers gathered in one place! How good is that? You can reach them quickly, easily and inexpensively. Word of warning however, wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing are not welcome. It is important that you enter the community with altruistic intentions – this is about adding value and building relationships NOT selling. The theory is that once you have solid relationship and a two-way dialogue with customers the sale will come. Better than that however, you will have a customer evangelist to take your message to others and convince them of your strengths. This is not to say that social networking is a panacea to all your marketing problems, traditional tactics still have a role to play depending on your objectives. It is to say that this is a phenomenon you must pay attention to – the game has changed.
2 Comments so far Having a corporate blog has been a great opportunity for my organization, not only does it allow us to easily reach our customers and users, it also provides us with forum for us to effectively interact with our customers and allows them to share insights about how, when, why they use our service. Our online strategy, which includes our blog, along with blogging on other sites, Twitter and working with market influencers has been extremely fruitful as it provides us with a touch point with our consumers that traditional advertising/outreach just can't provide. Long live the blogosphere! By Beverly on 2009 10 30 |
As a tech marketer my biggest fear in launching a corporate blog of our own (vs. participating in others - which is much more fun!) is that it will become near impossible to keep the site current when times get busy. We've all had those crazy tradeshow months that never seem to end or the website launch that draaaags and the last thing you have time to think about is drafting a meaningful blog entry. Sigh. However, as Kyna so accurately puts it, there is a fundamental change in the way people are communicating these days and not taking the leap (or even a little jump) towards integrating a social media strategy for your organization would be a shame. I'd love to hear from anyone who has successfully launched a corporate blog and how challenging they find it is keeping the posts current. My fairly green but growing opinion (open for debate) would be that you require at least 1 new post a week to keep the site fresh, 2 would be great. And, a variety of topics (some business, some a little techy) would attract a variety of audiences, which would be a good goal. Thoughts? Allowing comments can be scary but as longs as you are able to review and post in a timely fashion - I believe the free speech part is a necessity if you want the blog to prosper.
By Amanda Weber on 2009 10 16