Blogs: What are They Good For? Some Savvy Marketers Say Business

By Todd Smart, with Susan E. Fisher

Short for Weblog, a blog is a wildly popular communications vehicle.

Once dismissed as the plaything of angst-driven teenagers and chatty gadflies, savvy marketers are now considering the blog's potential as a serious business communication tool.

A blog is best known as the 21st Century's technological equivalent of the speaker's soapbox. It's essentially an online bulletin board that is updated usually by just one person on a regular basis.

Blog writers — known as bloggers — offer opinionated, mostly relevant, topical information, usually with a very narrow focus. Bloggers post rants, arguments and running commentaries on a free-wheeling range of topics. Everything's fair game on a blog, from a biting opinion of a politician to the minute details of what a blogger had for dinner.

These diary-like entries are public, made available for the Web world to see and comment upon. That rich interchange is a big part of the blog's appeal. Countless throngs, upwards of a million by some estimates, write to blogs on a daily basis. The growth is explosive, in large part because blogs are easy to set up with freely available software.

Yet, it would be a big mistake — and a missed opportunity — to dismiss blogs as little more than forums for hobbyists.

• Blogs do appear to be a great medium for quickly passing the word on product updates, company news, and any type of information companies wish to quickly get into the hands of prospects and customers.
  
  
• Blogs have a technological edge over online bulletin boards, Web sites and email, which may make them the ultimate in permission marketing. Blogs can be broken down into a discrete message which can be "syndicated," or distributed for publication. A software program called a newsreader or news aggregator uses Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to check for new blog postings and automatically deliver them to your desktop.

Just download a piece of software called a newsreader and you can control the flow of blog messages called posts into your computer. A newsreader is parallel to Microsoft Corp.'s Outlook software for email. The newsreader will scan all the blogs you told it to check and retrieve any new post automatically.

• With RSS, 100 percent of the control of the flow of messages remains in recipients' hands. There's no way to get spam. There's also no way for a blog to send new posts to a recipient if that person deletes the blog feed. It's completely pull technology from the user's perceptive, not push.
  
  Definition: "Pull" technology allows computer users to seek out and download data as they wish. The recipient initiates the transfer of information. (blogs) Pull technology contrasts with "push" technology, which allows the sender to deliver or "push" the data to computer users. In push technology, the sender initiates the transfer of information. (email)
  
  
• Blogs empower the recipient because the permission is in their hands. You know if someone has syndicated to your blog, they really want the information.
  
  
• Because these messages are "pulled" in by the reader, blog messages never get rejected by spam filters or caught in bulk folders.

The fact that blogs give recipients control has many industry experts favoring blogs. These experts predict that blogs will become the replacement for email newsletters as the online permission marketing choice.

At BeTuitive Marketing we've launched our own blogs. We are testing the effectiveness of blogs and collecting experience we can pass on to our valued customers. After eight months of testing, we've already enjoyed some benefits.

Here are key findings so far:

• Because they are updated on a regular basis, search engines are in love with blogs. BeTuitive has appeared in the top ten Google search results under many terms and phrases because of our blog messages, saving thousands of dollars in AdWords buys. As we learn more, we will pass on that knowledge to our customers.
  
  
• Blogs are very non-threatening due to 100 percent of the permission being in the recipient's control.
  
  
• We are driving traffic to our Web site from our blog, which is turning into sales leads (pricing requests), newsletter signups (permission to market to them), and online demo requests (sales presentation permission).

Of course, the jury on blogs remains out. The communications technology could be the next big thing or just a passing fancy. At a minimum, blogs deserve the serious consideration of any savvy marketer. Look for our "Best of Blog" column in each month's newsletter or download a newsreader and syndicate to our blogs at http://betuitive.blogs.com/betuitive/ and http://betuitive.blogs.com/beconnected/.

Resources:

Yahoo directory of Newsreaders / News Aggregators
Click Here — most are free

My favorite RSS Reader, News Gator, http://www.newsgator.com/ — like most things the best one costs money; this is not free

Shameless plug

BeTuitive is looking for two businesses that want to do a blog and outsource the strategy, technology, content research/writing and results analysis to us. If you want to work with us please call or email me at Todd.Smart@BeTuitive.com, (312) 832-1500. We'll be pricing this really reasonably in order to gain more experience with this new marketing medium.

Todd Smart is the President of BeTuitive Marketing. A "serial entrepreneur" — as described by Crain's Chicago Business — Todd has founded and been president of four successful businesses since the age of 22. In addition to Crain's, Todd has been featured and quoted in a number of publications, including Forbes, Success magazine, ePraire and a cover article of Inc. magazine. Todd is an entrepreneur who possesses a deep understanding of the complexities of growing business relationships.

Susan is the Editorial Director at BeTuitive Marketing. Susan's articles have been published in both the print and online versions of a variety of publications including Investor's Business Daily, the Boston Herald, Fortune magazine's Technology Buyer's Guide, InfoWorld and the Chicago Tribune.

Copyright © 2004 BeTuitive Marketing