70. The Blogosphere

Blogs are booming in popularity as a public relations and marketing tool. Technorati, a blog index, sites that more than 133 million blogs have been written and posted by people and companies to reflect perspectives on a particular topic, event, or news story. Over 900,000 people write and post articles every day. Blogs can be served up on an existing Web site, a separate Web site, delivered via email, or subscribed to using an RSS feed. This makes it easy to add frequently read blogs to a personal home page.

Businesses don’t create blogs to necessarily sell products or solutions, although this is often the outcome. The main purpose of a blog is to connect users and readers with the personal brand of a person or company. People subscribe to blogs because they get value from the content, not because they are being sold something. A blog gives like-minded people an opportunity to talk directly with people who share similar interests, and post ideas about specific topics.

Seth Godin is a bestselling author of several marketing books, including Permission Marketing, The Purple Cow, and several others. Both marketers and business owners can gain valuable insight from his blog posts, which he updates almost every day. What does Godin get out of writing a daily blog? At a minimum, he has the opportunity to connect with people, learn from them, and test ideas. He also communicates his expertise. If people are interested in learning more, they can click on links to buy books or hire him for speaking engagements.

Godin is also the founder of Squidoo, a community of “lenses.” Lenses are pages created by users (lensmasters) that aggregate and share everything on a topic of interest. Pages are called lenses as each person’s lenses are focused on a topic. Users can create multiple lenses focused on different topics. As of January 2010, Squidoo has more than 1 million lenses and 800,000 visitors a day. Squidoo is free to use. Revenue comes from advertising and affiliate links. The company donates 5 percent of earnings to charity, 45 percent is allocated to company overhead, and the remaining 50 percent goes back to charity or the people who build lenses (their choice).

Squidoo is an interesting community of eclectic ideas and topics. It’s another way to build your community and create interest around a passion. The point of Squidoo is not to sell something, but to engage, entertain, and find people who share your passion and interests.

Alltop is an online magazine that aggregates and sorts information from all over the Internet. It’s one of the best places on the Web to find content spanning a huge number of categories, as well as to see the issues are the most important to people. List your blog in the Alltop Directory to help raise visibility and awareness. It’s a unique site where you are sure to find new readers.

When blogs are well written and executed, they become a very effective marketing strategy. They provide a fabulous forum for talking with customers (think real-time research). Visitors of a blog share a common interest (you, your company, or your products) and they enjoy giving tips and advice that improve the experience for others. For this reason, blog posts can be updated with new information from your company, as well as by customers who enjoy sharing their opinion and helping others. If you allow members to comment and share their own content, it not only helps the content development effort, but more importantly it creates goodwill, builds your brand, and creates relationships with your current and future customers.

New software, such as WordPress and TypePad, has made it easy for anyone to quickly create and update their own blog with no HTML experience needed. Through the use of templates and the framework for the content management system, anyone can author their own blog. In fact, many businesses and professionals choose to create a blog site instead of a traditional Web site because it is so easy to use and to update content.

Evaluate how other companies are facilitating and implementing blogs to get ideas for your business. Check out the previously mentioned examples as well as blog lists, such as Blogcast, Technorati, Bloggapedia, and the extensive listings compiled by Peter Kim.

Here are a few things you can do to improve your results from implementing a blog:

• Even before you create a blog, define your blog strategies and process.

• If you create a blog, you will need to commit to posting updates (one to five times a week is ideal). Create a plan for the topics you will blog about, and if you can, create a library of content that you can access.

• Submit your URL and RSS feed to blog directories, RSS directories, and search engines.

• Share your knowledge and expertise with others in your industry. As your network increases, you will see other blogs link to and reference your blog.

• Respond to comments and questions and thank other bloggers who reference your material or link to your site.

• Promote and market your blog as you would a product or service. Include the blog address on your business card and other marketing materials. Market your site using social media networks and through channels that can post your blog within a larger portal that is relevant to your target audience.

• Actively research high-ranking blogs and Web sites and exchange links.

Getting Started

In the next chapter, you will use a tool, the “Social Media Strategy and Planning Guide,” that will help you bring all the components of social media together to develop your strategy and plan. The tool follows the same planning process you have been using throughout this book. You will start with defining the objectives you want to accomplish and finish with tactical tools and ROI evaluation metrics. If you follow this process, it will ensure you are developing your strategy before you get into the fun tactical tools of social media.