Buzz!Words

Blogging for Fun and Profit

The great thing about experimenting in a new medium, like blogging, is that no one really knows where it's going. 

I read blog posts, and traditional print articles on the phenomenal growth of blogging almost every day. 

Newsweek (I'll be darned if I can find the link to the article) recently told the story of a 19 year old in Florida making $55 K a year posting a blog about new models of cell phones.  That right.  He reviews new cell phones, and then has links to retail stores selling these cell phones (called an affiliate).  If a user clicks on that link and makes a purchase online, the blogger gets a small percentage of the sale.

Blogs can be used as communications/pr tools, as marketing tools, or as a way to build credibility.  As long as you fit within the basic rules of blogging - respect for your reader, listening to their comments and engaging with them, you can use a blog pretty much any way you want.  Wil Wheaton (Wesley Crusher of StarTrek Next Generation fame) started a blog about life as a frustrated actor.  As a result, he has a contract to write books. 

Experiment, just for the fun of it and see what a blog might do for your business today!

Blogs - More Mainstream than You Think

As a marketing tool, blogs might be something you think is pretty cutting edge, right?  Well, it turns out that blogs aren't that new, or that niche.  They are a great way to communicate regularly with potential clients. 

Here are some interesting facts from Pew Internet and American Life project on blogs.  Blog readership has grown 58% in 2004, to 27% of US internet users.  Certainly the US election spurred some of this massive growth, but as the number of blogs grow, so to will the number of readers.

So, Who Reads Blogs? According to a study by BlogAds, published in  IMediaConnection, US blog readers are older (61% are over the age of 30; 42% are age 40 or over.  They are wealthier than you would expect as well, with nearly 40% having an income of $90K or more.  They are looking for news, information and perspective. 

Why does this matter?  If blog readers are older and wealthier than we thought, then blogs become a great tool to build a relationship with prospective customers, and could help build a virtual community that supports your business.  You can establish yourself as a credible expert in your field, and that can help you build a business.   

If you give your readers news, useful information and a perspective on your field, you will create a readership. 

Blogs are inexpensive in terms of money.  They do require an investment of time to post to your blog on a frequent basis.  So you have to be sure that you can commit to the effort. 

Blog Fog

I read an article on blogging in Marketing Magazine yesterday that made my hair stand on end. Not about the blogging part, but one of the participants interviewed for the article really hit a sore spot with me.

He says he's still waiting for Canadian marketers to embrace the blog, but he's not holding his breath. "It's a generational thing," he says. "To be blunt, senior management in their 40s, 50s and 60s-they don't get it. They'll never get it, and to a degree, we won't see significant change until the younger generation takes over the corner office, because they've grown up in this universe. They think differently, they act differently, they don't have the hangups."

What a load of crap. People in their 40s 50s and 60s do embrace change. The reason that senior management doesn't embrace blogging has nothing to do with their age. It has to do with corporate cultures that punish risk taking and reward those who make as few decisions as possible. People who embrace new ideas and technologies eventually get chased out of the organization, leaving risk averse managers who manage for the downside, not the upside.

If we want to see Canadian marketers embrace blogging, I think we need to do a better job of demonstrating the benefits of a blog to both marketers and senior management. I always found that within the fog of the large corporatation, that persistence and a lot of repetition were necessary to persuade management to test new ideas.