Blog – No not a 50’s B-Monster Movie

It is known as a blog not the “Blob”. There are many different approachs to creating a blog or even describing the act of blogging – posting a blog or comments to a posted blog. Think of it as a type of journaling. You may also think of it as an on-line newspaper or magazine of opinions and interactive comments.

Blogs have the greatest effect on business communications. As it relates to New Media Marketing, they are the most direct to-way online communication vehicle used in today’s business environment. Consumers today do not want a monologue. They want conversation and that is exactly what a blog does.

Just as any other marketing tool, blogs must have a specific target audience to be successful.
Remember: Because of the nature of blogs they are the key to building your community of buyers. Your audience, who may not normally have the chance of communicating with each other, can use a blog to do exactly that. Thus they can not only communicate with a business owner but also with each other. To ignore this is ignoring how people use electronic communications.

Working with clients and New Media Marketing, the blog is often the most difficult to convince them of and yet the most important and critical. Some of the reasons used for not blogging:

• Fear
• Ignorance
• Lack of leadership (agents of change)
• Lazy
• Insecure
• Belief that it does not apply to their industry (this demonstrates a total lack of what is happening in the world today or misplaced sense of knowing better than your customer)

Blogs also permit you to not only listen to your targeted audience but also to communicate with them in an informal manner. Many entrepreneurs are using blogs to introduce their new concept or enterprise.

Some people do not blog because they do not want return comments. In today’s environment that is “burying your head in the sand”. With that attitude or fear, you might as well raise the surrender flag and prepare to close your doors.

There is one simple rule for a blog: make it relevant and update frequently. A good rule of thumb is to blog at least twice a week. One of the great things about blogging is that it is an excellent platform to stir the pot, kick the ant hill, stimulate thought. Just remember to be interesting and not offensive.

Some people just cannot blog, it is not in them. Many in this situation have others create their blog. It is no different then having a writer create your text/copy for other marketing collateral. Several of our clients retain us to write their blogs. It is also acceptable to get personal just keep your professionalism.

And finally, if you build a successful blog site, you can actually create revenue through such programs as Google’s AdSense.