October 2005

A Blog Is a Two-Way Street: Benefits of Business Blogs
By Mary Sullivan, KickStart Alliance

Business blogs are hot. Publications such as BusinessWeek are telling businesses, "Catch up, or catch you later" (BusinessWeek, May 2, 2005). Why should businesses use blogs when they're already expending time, energy and budget on traditional media and web content? Must you have a blog just to show you're forward-thinking and cool?

There's more to it than that. This article will examine the business benefits of public blogs. (Internal knowledge-sharing tools including internal blogs, Wikis, forums and file-sharing are a whole other article.)

What Is a Blog?

Blog is short for weblog, a self-published journal that is accessible via the web. Unlike a corporate website, content on a blog can be published "on the fly" and is interactive. An author posts a short article to which readers can attach comments, like a conversation. A blog differs from chat in that the blog author controls the agenda.

Blogging software is like web content-management software that allows authorized individuals to post content to a corporate website. Like content-management systems, blogs bypass the IT department and allow the author to get content online swiftly.

A blog's interactive nature is worrisome to some executives who are afraid to expose their companies to dialogues with the public. They shouldn't be. The benefits of business blogs can be huge.

Why Have a Business Blog?

Feedback—Blogs are powerful vehicles for market feedback—from customers, partners and prospects. Blog comments provide up-to-the-minute information on what your target audience is thinking. What would customers like your product to do? What would make it easier for partners to work with you? Businesses that ignore what customers want do so at their peril. (Do U.S. automakers come to mind?)

Blogs enable two-way communication with a highly targeted audience. These conversations permit you to rapidly test new concepts and, in the process, strengthen relations with the audience.

Speed—The immediacy of publishing content via a blog suits fast-paced business environments. There are no logistical problems and no lead-time requirements. Just write it and publish it.

Exposure—Blogs can dramatically improve your rankings in search engines. You can make each posting searchable and elevate your position in a Google search almost overnight.

Positioning—Executives who publish blogs establish themselves as thought leaders or subject matter experts. The blogger controls the agenda. Microsoft uses blogs to soften its image. Cisco uses a blog to promote a point of view. Smaller companies use blogs to improve their visibility.

Targeting—A company can have multiple blogs dedicated to special audiences or segments. A blog can focus on developers. A vertical industry blog talks to a niche or micro-market. Macromedia uses blogs for partner communication. Blogs let you establish conversations with special segments and develop special relationships with them.

Reach—A blog may be the only way to truly reach some audiences. The younger generation is tuning out traditional marketing communications and media. They want control over what they read, and the blog format lets them get what they want through an informal medium.

How Do You Get People to Read Your Blog (and What is RSS Anyway)?

Is it hard to get people to read your blog? Isn't it easier to just publish e-newsletters?

No, and no. E-mail is a challenging marketing tool these days because of spam filters and general e-mail overload. Little of it actually gets read.

RSS stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication, depending on who's talking. RSS is a syndication process that can distribute your blog postings to interested readers without using e-mail. Readers subscribe to an RSS newsreader page, such as Newsgator, which aggregates feeds from blogs that interest them. They receive a headline, abstract and a link for each new posting from the blogs they choose. There's no surfing and no e-mail filters blocking content.

Will blogs and feeds replace email newsletters? Probably, but not for a while. The good news about blogs is that e-mail isn't required for blog delivery. The bad news is that it's harder to collect data on newsreader users than it is on newsletter readers. For now, they will co-exist.

Sold on the Benefits of Blogging?

If you are, here are a few thoughts before you start:

• Use of RSS newsreaders is still very low. Fewer than 5 percent of Internet users today subscribe to news feeds. However, the number is growing rapidly and certain audiences, especially in the tech community, have much higher concentrations.
• Blog writing takes time, so make the commitment to keep your blog fresh. Post information to your blog at least weekly.
• If you know you won't have enough time but really want a blog, hire a blogger to write for you.

Read Mary's companion article, Business Blogging Tips

© 2005 KickStart Alliance. All rights reserved.

Mary Sullivan is a fledgling blogger and cos-founder of KickStart Alliance (www.kickstartall.com), a sales and marketing consulting group serving businesses that are entering new markets. You can visit her blog for new entrepreneurs at www.waytogrow.typepad.com.