Why Blogging is Essential

Agenda• Why?• What are the characteristics of the most successful

blogs?• What distinguishes the successful from unsuccessful

blogs?• How to present the case for blogs and other social

media to management.• How to handle the Return On Investment (ROI)

issue.• How to present ‘baby steps’ to management; simple

measures that show results.

Why?• Analogy:

– Everyone should run anti-virus on their computer.– Computer security people also need to understand

how to grab data off the wire and examine it to see if it’s hostile.

– Everyone (all professionals) need to understand the basics of how to use the Internet: browsers, email, etc.

– Marketing professionals also need to understand blogs.

Marketers Don’t Need to BlogBut they need to understand, perhaps have even experienced, blogging

Not All Companies Need to Blog

Just like all companies don’t need to use Google AdWords, Direct Mail, Viral Videos, coupons in the newspaper . . .

But Blogging is extremely powerful when done right, and many (most?) companies should consider it

• Communicating with your marketplace

• Adding personality to fairly impersonal “Company” images

• Establishing yourself and your company as an expert

Why Blogs?

• Driving traffic to your Web site (search engines love blogs)

• Attracting a regular following of readers as blogs are dynamic and interactive

• Building familiarity

Why Blogs (2) ?

• Most traditional marketing techniques

• Writing endlessly about your products or services

• Sales letter type material

• Any “hard sell” type anything

What Doesn’t Work

• Providing valuable information to your marketplace

• Occasionally weaving your products and services into the discussion as appropriate

• Advertising/displaying in the sidebars

What Does Work

• A somewhat experienced blogger

• Planning

• Consistency

• Conversational

Successful Blogs (1)

• Honesty

• Personal

• Patience

• PASSION – the blogger(s) must be passionate on the subject and that passion must show

Successful Blogs (2)

What Management Cares About

• Most people in management are pretty smart (despite perhaps obvious counter-examples!)– They care about:

• Money – (Return On Investment)

• Risk – e.g. a CEO’s job is primarily risk management

ROI – Return on Investment

• Few business decisions have an absolutely guaranteed ROI, if any. Business involves risk - obviously.

• There is easily measurable ROI in some areas, like search engine traffic.

• What’s the ROI of pants? Of the telephone? Of paperclips?

• Sometimes easier to take it (and ROI) in ‘baby steps.’

Baby Step (1)

• People are already talking about us, our products, our competitors, our industry.

We can listen for free.

ROI: Really? It takes SOME time (time=money)

Risk: But NOT listening also has risks.

Baby Step (2)

• We can join conversations by leaving comments.

ROI: If we’re already listening, joining the conversation is easy and cheap.

RISK: But it’s always possible someone will say something stupid!

Baby Step 3

• Reaching Out To Bloggers

ROI: Bloggers who might be interested in out products, services, etc. can be (personally) approached. Maybe offered samples, trials, etc.

Risk: But they write scathing reviews (they might anyway).

Baby Step 4

• Starting a Blog (perhaps with comments turned off or moderated initially)

ROI: A new channel to communicate with customers. Cost = time.

Risk: We might look foolish, might embarrass ourselves, etc.

Baby Step 5

• Encouraging employees to blog themselves, and having thousands of passionate employee bloggers like Microsoft.

ROI: A herd of passionate employees engaging customers. The Microsoft example.

Risk: We no longer control the conversation (hint: you already don’t control the conversation)

An Alternative

• Whether it seems logical or not, often management is much more comfortable with podcasting.

• A Podcast is really just time shifted Internet Radio, and everyone is comfortable with radio, right?

Thank You

• Blogs are an important tool that should be in every (Search Engine) Marketers toolkit.

Ted Demopoulos, Information Consultant

ted@demop.com

EffectiveInternetPresence.com or just Google me