You’ve decided to add blogging to your online marketing mix. Now what?
The basic rule to blogging is that any new addition to the blogosphere has to be cognizant that there is a community already established. There are no ‘rules’ per se, but there are underlying guidelines that will make or break your acceptance into the overall community. If you want to run a successful blog that is well-read and well-received, it is important to remember these general guidelines.
h2. Be authentic
There are many examples of companies who have failed when introducing ‘fake’ blogs – either through fictional characters (a.k.a. Character Blogs like “Captain Morgan”:http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2005/03/argh_captain_mo.html and “Uri Planet”:http://www.uriplanet.com) or the fabrication of ‘real’ people (a.k.a. Flogs “Vichy”:http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2005/06/case_study_the_.html and “Sparkle Body Spray”:http://utopianhell.com/blog/fake-blog-fake-bloggers). These companies ventured into the blogosphere assuming that either people that read blogs would be amused or they would be fooled. These blogs achieved neither outcome. These blogs did get a great deal of airtime on other blogs, but the result was not positive for the brands being promoted.
h2. Be interesting
Everyone is interested in different information. You don’t have to produce lengthy articles and personal anecdotes if doing so is laborious (in fact, you shouldn’t – you run the risk of being inauthentic). You can post product modifications and releases, news on upcoming events and demos, answers to frequently asked questions, customer feedback (both positive and negative), job postings, links to mentions in the press and any other information that may be interesting to a reader. The more you post, the easier it becomes. You’ll find yourself in a meeting one day thinking, “I should blog this” and you’ll know that you are a full-fledged ‘blogger’.
Category: Tara Hunt
A “handful of companies”:http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/81/blog.html run successful, high traffic blogs. A “handful of bloggers”:http://www.bloglines.com/topblogs run high traffic blogs that can benefit companies who want to place strategic banner ads. Overall, though, a strategy that involves buying ads on blogs or running a blog for your company isn’t the most effective strategy for influencing the blogosphere.
Blogs can’t be dismissed as a trend. The over 13.5 million voices online are covered more often in the press and linked to other blogs and websites more often than ever. The voice of one blogger can spread to hundreds of bloggers and readers within hours. Just search the recent London Bombings and you will realize that “London bloggers had incredible influence on the news”:http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2005/07/london_bombings.html.
So, how would you go about harnessing the influence of the blogosphere to spread the word about your company? Could you pay bloggers to speak highly of your product or service?
In 1999, very few people knew what the long term significance of the Internet would be on ‘business-as-usual’. Many were designing corporate websites like brochures and thinking of these websites as just another extension of a company brand. The Internet was largely thought of as a medium that carried unreliable information. Intranets were where corporations posted company policies and business forms. Although most recognized that having a website was crucial for a business’s legitimacy, the implications of how crucial this was for the future of business were not well-known.
There was one particular group of visionaries that knew the significance of the online revolution. This group included “Doc Searls”:http://www.searls.com, “Chris Locke”:http://www.rageboy.com/index2.html and “David Weinberger”:http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/.