Blog Marketing and Social Media Optimization - Why Bother Blogging? (Page 2 of 4 )
One of the biggest reasons you should blog is the same reason you are on
Digg. You want to reach influencers, which are bloggers who reach out to thousands of fellow bloggers in the same community, like www.engadget.com and www.gizmodo.com for tech blogs and
problogger for Internet marketing and blogging. These influencers are where industry heavyweights, geeks, and netizens go to check out the latest hype, the latest news, and the most off-beat stories. You have to get the attention of these influencers not only through paid advertisements on their sites, but also by pumping them full of the off-beat news that bloggers like.
Give the biggest blogger in the niche you are targeting an exclusive once in a while. Blogs empower people to express their knowledge and opinions to anyone who cares to listen. This is important for marketers because consumers now control part of the conversation and can influence a brand's future based on their personal perceptions. And you can't take the user's opinion for granted anymore. The people who browse blogs spend more time (blogs are built for content), spend more money, and are more tech savvy than your average surfer. He/she is probably more highly educated and more opinionated (and hence more likely to complain if you offer a bad service).
You have to create a relationship with influencers. They can ruin you with a bad story and you can't hide things from them. And unlike most big news agencies, some of them actually check your press releases (ask Dan Rather). They have to respect you enough so that if a bad story breaks about your organization, you can actually get your voice heard -- and you won't look like some corporate prig because an editor would actually vouch for you.
And you have to get a blog of your own, or you may not get much love from the blogosphere. Blogging is pretty much the extreme sports of the web. If you are into yourself and your organization, nobody will read you. If you are out there you will get traffic (and respect from your community), but you could also be looked at as a freak by your more stodgy corporate customers. So think Wired.com instead of HP.com. According to Heidi Cohen, corporate blogs require a level of transparency. As a result, they may not work for all types of companies. Corporate bloggers should have access to everybody in the organization. Having a blog makes you look like a person and not just a piece of some soulless corporate machine.
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