Question

Topic: Advertising/PR

The Value Of Blogs

Posted by Anonymous on 11/2/2004 at 6:36 PM ET 500 Points
What are the benefits and costs of a blog? What conditions make a blog valuable? Experience and examples are most welcome.
To continue reading this question and the solution, sign up ... it's free!
SUBSCRIBE
Or, SIGN IN

RESPONSES

  • Posted by Blaine Wilkerson on 11/2/2004 at 7:01 PM Accepted
    Although the benefits are numerous, here are a few of the most notable:

    1. Personal communication with your audience/visitors. You have the opportunity to speak freely, be yourself, and discuss topics without cliches, or stagnant corporate copy.

    2. Feedback: Your readers can respond to your blog/post by making comments, asking questions, adding opinions, etc...and you can reply at will. It's much like a forum only easier to use and viewable by all.

    3. Syndication: you can offer RSS feeds to your blog for people to place on their desktops, websites, etc. This can help with SEO and overall brand awareness...not to mention exposure to potential clents.

    Costs:

    Most blog programs are free. "tikiwiki" is a free program you can instal on your server and integrate into your site. There are many other versions as well that are starting to come standard with most hosting packages. My server has a script called "Fantistico" which is a lot like tikiwiki. They are all based on a script language popularly referred to as "WIKI".

    There are blog serves that charge nominal fees to manage your blogs for you if you do not possess the time or ability to instal and customize. www.typepad.com is a prime example. As a matter of fact, Seth Godin (www.sethgodin.com) uses this program for his blog. His blog has won some awards and is perhaps the best example of how a blog is used and how it can benefit your brand. Tom Peters is a blogger as well, www.tompeters.com . I recommend visiting both sites to see how these industry leaders use blogs as a major communication tool.

    Now, there is a risk of people veiwing negative remarks to your blogs. Most programs allow you to control how and which responses are veiwed...but the overall benefit of leaving it open for all is to give you a change to expose yourself as a person and respond as such. This requires careful attention. Negative replies may be intimidating, but coming from a humanistic standpoint, people will tend to respect your honesty by allowing such posts to be viewable and observing how you handle it. Hence the need to be ready for a challenge and the responsibility of staying on top of the blog.

    I hope this helps! If you are interested in moving to server with free blog software, please send me an email to discuss (just click on my name).

    Thank You!
  • Posted by Blaine Wilkerson on 11/2/2004 at 7:03 PM Member
    BTW- Thanks for all your hard work here at MP!
  • Posted by SteveByrneMarketing on 11/2/2004 at 7:21 PM Member
    Hi Roy,

    I asked a related question in September. My sense is that blogs, in their evolving form, are beneficial just by being an alternative way to distribute content and possibly an excellent way around the spam issues of email marketing for many situations. Here’s a link to the past question --

    https://www.marketingprofs.com/ea/qst_question.asp?qstID=3159


    hope this helps,

    - Steve
  • Posted by SRyan ;] on 11/2/2004 at 7:49 PM Member
    Hi, Roy...

    Your question reminded me of my response in an earlier Q&A thread here. See Blog disadvantages for my quick example of blog value.

    You might consider getting in touch with the CEO that I mention in that thread...

    Shelley

    ps. Sorry, I'm too distracted watching election results to give you a lengthy response. ;]
  • Posted by darcy.moen on 11/3/2004 at 12:40 AM Member
    Blogs build a great sense of community, not to mention, if you are blogging in a niche in which you end up dominating, you effectively become the 'expert' of your area.

    I am involved with an opensource project that has a few key individuals writing and releasing news and developments as they occur. These same individuals websites have become THE main source for news and current events. What's happened is, if you aren't visiting XYZ site, then you are out of the loop!

    The only cost I've found is the cost of my time I invest in maintaining my blog/website. I'be selected a simple to administer tool, leaving my time free to develope and write content.

    The benefits are endless, the costs can be minimal, but you only get out of it what you put into it.

    Darcy Moen (the Customer Loyalty Network)
  • Posted by bobhogg on 11/3/2004 at 10:29 AM Member
    Roy...

    I should be able to let you know my answer to your question in a month or two's time!

    Fact is, I've just started to set up a couple of blogs (using TypePad which Jett mentioned above), so have little experience as yet.

    However, one of those blogs I started to provide back-up to students on a course I run at a local College (the course leads to Chartered Institute of Marketing qualifications). Each week, after the face-to-face tutorials I run, I post some thoughts, questions and links to relevant websites on the topics we have discussed in the tutorial. It's early days, but initial feedback from students has been very positive. I know this is probably not a typical use of a blog but it has allowed me to "add value" to the course I run, and, longer term, may enable me to run distance-learning for these qualifications too.

    Look forward to reading other peoples' responses and experience.

    Bob
  • Posted by ReadCopy on 11/4/2004 at 11:00 AM Member
    Just to add to all of the above ... blogs are a great way of soliciting customer services and industry feedback from your customers / prospects.

    Used very little as a marketing tool, but if you can committed to making it work, customers and propects will tell you exactly what they think and allow you to build a better customer service/marketing strategy.
BACK TO TOP

Post a Comment

Related Discussions

Community Info

Top 25 Experts
(Advertising/PR)