Why Every Business is Going to Need a Blog
Posted by Peter Brady on Tue 10th July 2007 at 06:00 AM, Filed in Blog PR
Every year new marketing gimmicks become the must have accessory to any successful campaign. Many lose their effectiveness over time, others fall to the way side. So what’s different about this blog lark?
The simple answer is cost effective, far reaching delivery of a campaign message. This is rooted in the gradual transformation of content consumption. We are all moving away from a society where TV schedules, newspapers and magazines dictate how and where media is consumed. Instead we are now offered the opportunity to select what, when, where and how we consume media. That’s a radical transformation in philosophy and it’s not stopping there.
Media isn’t only for consumption anymore, it’s also about participation and contribution. Blogs, YouTube, FlickR, MySpace, Facebook all sit under the umbrella of “social media”, “social networking” and “user generated content”. The all encompassing term for this is Web 2.0 media. A label that must have been thought up by a Hollywood executive! Although, personally I would have preferred “Return of the Killer Web”.
Something that is misunderstood about this web revolution is how integrated many of these components are. Blogs linking to YouTube, YouTube linking to blogs, MySpace incorporating blogs and linking to other blogs – so on and so on. An environment of this nature is built to communicate at break neck speed. In fact to coin a rather overused term:- “It’s viral heaven”.
At the very core of this revolution are blogs. For the uninitiated the word “blog” is derived from “Weblog” which is essentially a web site incorporating some clever formatting software, that allows simple posting of articles and functionality for readership to comment. The exponential growth in this medium has in many ways mirrored the decline of “old media”. Rather worryingly for the likes of newspapers this shows no signs of abating anytime soon. There is no doubt that Rupert Murdoch foresaw the winds of change when he purchased MySpace!
According to Technorati there are now an estimated 70 million blogs in existence with 1.5 million articles posted each day. The opportunity to tap into even a tiny fraction of this online exposure is vast. Of even more importance is that the Top 100 index of the most linked sites shows blogs doubling in influence as every year goes by. This indicates that not only do blogs now present unique online opportunities, but they are also consolidating their position as serious news and information sources among traditional, established media content publishers.
The shaping of a marketing strategy that melds together the varying components of Web 2.0 is now where it’s at. This can include targeting of key blogs in the right niches, creating campaign specific “Pop up blogs”, YouTube viral imagery and MySpace promotion (as used so effectively by the music industry). This non exhaustive list of Web 2.0 marketing components, with blogs at it’s very heart can be brought together to form a very powerful and far reaching marketing strategy.
The short term Return On Investment (ROI) can be quite staggering. But when calculated in the long term, ROI literally takes on a life of it’s own. The old cliché “today’s news is tomorrows chip paper” could no clearer describe the long term differential of “old media” and “Web 2.0”. The implication being that online reach leaves indelible foot prints across the web. These foot prints sustain a campaign way beyond the initial phase and can provide long term search engine optimisation benefits through inbound links to your target site.
The quandary this throws up is, “Do you leave those indelible foot prints to chance, with some good old fashioned head burying in the sand?” “Or do you manage your online presence through a coordinated Web 2.0 strategy?”
Of one thing we can be sure. These questions will take on a greater significance for business as every year passes.
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