I’ve been wondering lately why I should start blogging again. What is it that I have to offer that would make me so different from others? Often when I’m browsing blogs, I find the same video’s or photoshopped images. The same jokes, the same quotes. Wouldn’t internet be better off without me repeating stuff from others ?
To the above question, the answer is without any doubt ‘yes’. But still. I feel an urge to share the things I find impressive, stupid or downright foolish with a growing amount of readers. A little bit encouraged by Nathan from InsideGoogle, I decided to restart my blog. It’s better than bombing url’s through my trillian console only to find myself closing dozens of ‘heheheh’ pop-up chat windows for the next ten minutes after
I’ve sent out some new e-thrash.
So far for my reasons. Let’s have a look at the importance of blogging, and the possibilities thereof. A few weeks ago, I needed to do an interview with somebody for the campaign we’re working on for our school project. We needed to interview a ‘privileged witness’, a person with experience in the field, someone who could advise us and give us tips to reach our target market in a more efficient way, by specific means etc.
During this interview, I began to understand the relevance of ’social software’ and social networks even more, and I got convinced that ‘networking’ would be the next big thing. It already is, but it still needs to grow. It can be so much more than what it is today. And I want to be there when it happens.
Thus. Returning to the core-matter. Why is a blog so important in this ’social network’? What can it do for a company, for a product?
Robert Moskowitz stated on iMediaConnection that there are 5 good reasons to make people blog, or to blog. I agree with some of the
things he says, but there are some remarks on the side… you’ll see.
1. To put a human face on the company
“Research shows that consumers get tired of the smoothly polished corporate message, and may even tune it out. Conversely, they tend to perk up their ears when they detect an individual’s honest expression. It’s the same phenomenon that causes hand-addressed direct mail pieces to earn a better response than identical but machine-addressed pieces. Somewhere in your company are one or more people who are passionate advocates of your products and services, who are good communicators, and who know exactly how to get the most from your products and services. These are born bloggers, and if you don’t let them put their gifts to use, you’re under-utilizing a major marketing asset.”
2. Blog to obtain free market research
“Because blogs are naturally a two-way street, they’re a perfect forum for you to find out what your prospects and customers think, know and want. Where else can you put out information to literally thousands of your best customers, and have them give you their reactions, opinions and expertise — basically for free?”
See, here I disagree. For instance, in my blog there’s no ‘comments’ section and it has a reason. Sometimes it’s better to NOT let people comment on things, depending on the nature of the blog of course.
If you blog about a social ‘hot’ issue, you can predict the blog to become a forum where the shouting and woo-ing goes from the top to the bottom and back. There’s forums for this crap. Which brings me to the point,
should every blog become a forum? I say no. We must put an end to this. If the blog contains stupid things, comments should be banned, because without questioning the intelligence of the poster, if the topic is stupid, the reply most certainly also is.
Another reason for banning the comments on this site is the lack of time. I nearly have enough time to do all the stuff I want to do, let alone I’ll be taking time to check what other readers think of something I’ve posted days ago. It’s not that I don’t care what you have to say. I just don’t want you to say it here.
3. Blog to offer a “Buy In” that increases customer satisfaction
The third reason is a bit absolete for me, given my tender statement above, but it contains a good example of the benefits of having employees blog about developments within the company.
“… In other words, people who read your blog and comment on it are far more likely to be satisfied with your company, your products and your services than they ever were before. This is one reason Microsoft has recently begun to make such headway in gaining support and admiration from the developer community. The company has assigned key people to actively blog on topics of interest to developers. The dialogue that results has driven Microsoft’s approval rating among developers much, much higher than ever before. The company may or may not be giving developers more of what they want. But by blogging about it, they’ve increased the perception of how hard they’re trying, and they’ve reaped the benefits that inevitably flow from there.”
4. Blog to leverage opinion leaders’ influence
This is the most important reason for a company to begin a blog, or to appoint a company blog to someone from the internal staff. If you look at the world as a big network of social relations, and if you start treating a person as ‘a network or a social structure’ instead of an individual and personal approach, you’re bound to find that having insight in these structures is of high importance when it comes to finetuning a commercial service, a product or a ‘change’ in general.
“The original concept of blogging was an outreach tool to the masses. But blogging has evolved toward a more subtle usage: blogging for opinion leaders. Companies can make sure their bloggers angle their remarks toward key customers, influential thought leaders, and well-respected industry experts. Marketers can then make an effort to introduce these people to the blogs, and encourage them to keep subscribing and participating. The net effect is to provide these key constituencies with an early warning system for changes, new developments, coming upgrades, and more sophisticated usage of your company’s products and services. Over time, these people will not only help you fine tune these kinds of advancements, but will almost eagerly share what they are learning with their own circles of colleagues, co-workers and clients. The result is your targeted blogging effectively mobilizes these opinion leaders to make others aware of and excited about your offerings.”
5. Blog to gain on the Big Dogs
“Blogging tends to increase name recognition and boost traffic to your main website.” That’s about the clue of this item in the list.
For the record : I agree with this one.
Click here to go there and read more.
NOTE: Since I’ve quitted manual blogging in HTML and switched to automated blogsoftware, I now have comments. Spam is all over the place, but the moderation is ermmm, ‘doable’.
TIPS ON CORPORATE BLOGGING : WHY BLOG ?