Blogging for Business
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The document discusses reasons for businesses to blog, including increased exposure, generating leads, establishing expertise, building connections, improving search engine ranking, testing marketing strategies, responding to customers, recruitment, and media relations. It provides tips for blogging such as listening, planning, socializing, customizing, and tracking. Finally, it recommends some blogging tools and closes with contact information.
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Blogging for Business
- 1. for Business
- 2. Who Blogs?
- 3. Why Blog? Increased Exposure
- 5. Why Blog? Make Yourself into a “Guru”
- 6. Why Blog? Build Connections
- 7. Why Blog? Build Search Engine Ranking
- 8. Why Blog? Beta Test Marketing Strategies and Offers
- 9. Why Blog? Respond on Your Own Turf
- 11. Why Blog? Media Relations
- 12. What a Good Blog Looks Like
- 13. What a Bad Blog Looks Like
- 14. Now, one of my favorites.
- 15. Now, who’s missing the boat. “Good Morning Amy, Thank you for contacting Target; unfortunately we are unable to respond to your inquiry because Target does not participate with non-traditional media outlets. This practice is in place to allow us to focus on publications that reach our core guest. Once again thank you for your interest, and have a nice day.”
- 16. Five Blog Tips: Listen ORM Tools
- 17. Five Blog Tips: Plan
- 18. Five Blog Tips: Socialize
- 19. Five Blog Tips: Customize
- 20. Five Blog Tips: Track
- 22. Thanks for Your Time William Flavell Social Media Specialist Bozell E-mail: bflavell@bozell.com Blog: http://www.everybodysagenius.wordpress.com Twitter: @Swept14
Hinweis der Redaktion
- Hey Everybody, Thanks for coming out. This isn’t a real big crowd, so let’s just keep it loose. I have a presentation here, but we have an hour and a half and you payed to be here. So, please ask questions. During or after or whenever you want. I want to be a resource for you, and to make this valuable for everyone. Alright, let’s get started.
- First graphic: According to a recently released Nielsen study (December 2008) social networks and blogs are now more popular than e-mail. The graphic above shows social networking sites and blogs as “member communities.” It lists them as the fourth most popular activity online world wide.Two-thirds of the world’s Internet population visit social networking or blogging sites, accounting for almost 10% of all internet timeTime spent on social network sites is also expanding: Across the globe in 2008 activity in ‘Member Communities’ accounted for one in every 15 online minutes - now it accounts for one in every 11.While social networks started out among the younger audience, they’ve become more mainstream with the passage of time.This shift has primarily been driven by Facebook whose greatest growth has come from people aged 35-49 years of age (+24.1 million). From December 2007 through December 2008, Facebook added almost twice as many 50-64 year old visitors (+13.6 million) than it has added under 18 year old visitors (+7.3 million).Second graphic: Blogging is a truly global phenomenon: Technorati tracks blogs in 81 languages in June 2008, and bloggers responded to our survey from 66 countries across six continents. Technorati has indexed more than 133 million blogs since 2002. Here are some numbers (from Technorati’s 2008 state of the blogosphere):The numbers vary but agree that blogs are here to stay * comScoreMediaMetrix (August 2008)o Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US per montho Facebook: 41.0 million | MySpace 75.1 milliono Total internet audience 188.9 million-Blogs enjoy more visits than Facebook or MySpace. * eMarketer (May 2008)o 94.1 million US blog readers in 2007 (50% of Internet users)o 22.6 million US bloggers in 2007 (12%) * Universal McCann (March 2008)o 184 million WW have started a blog | 26.4 USo 346 million WW read blogs | 60.3 USo 77% of active Internet users read blogsBlogging is more than a decade old. First real blogging software and widespread use: “Open Diary” launched in October 1998, soon growing to thousands of online diaries. Open Diary innovated the reader comment, becoming the first blog community where readers could add comments to other writers' blog entries.
- First, the most obvious. Increased Exposure. That sounds like marketing speak and it is, but how else can you communicate with millions for little to no advertising cost? Give your story to the entire world.
- Leads or a lowered cost for lead acquisition: blogs provide a great way for you to interact with your audience. If you think about it, blogging becomes truly targeted advertising, because the only people who will come to your blog, are those interested in your category, topic and/or product. People who are already searching out your keywords. What better way to generate leads than providing relevant content about your product to those potential customers who are out actively searching it out.
- Creating consistent, relevant material on a subject establishes you as a leader/expert/guru. This is all it takes. When the newspaper quotes someone as an expert, that is what makes them an expert. Brand yourself as an expert and others will believe you and listen to you.
- Having a blog means putting yourself out there. It means talking to people honestly and openly. That kind of forthright attitude leads to personal connections. Beyond sales leads, you never know what dialogue could spark a new business partnership, opportunity, or referral.
- Let’s face it today. Search engine rankings make and break businesses. Every time Google redefines their algorithms, business go out of business. So, what is this mysterious search engine ranking based on. Mostly it is based on two factors: Content and Links. This is why Wikipedia shows up at the top of most search result pages. They have a lot of content and a lot of links. That is why Google loves blogs. Blogs allow you to publish fresh content filled with your keywords whenever you want. And if you publish relevant information, people will link to you.
- Gosh, if there were only a way to know what customers thought of our new marketing campaign before it went to print and I buy 50 new billboards. Will 10 cents off this fish sandwich really work? Well, there is a way to do this beta testing without inexpensive focus groups or surveys. Just ask consumers. Use you blog, run ideas past your core audience and ask for their advice. Then make your product, campaign, offer fit what your consumers want. If you make what they want, they will tell their friends.One of the examples later in this presentation does this perfectly.1.28 million followers
- If your brand is or has been the subject of a controversy. Then you definitely know trolls or flamers. Blogs give you an easy controllable medium to issue statements, moderate comments, give rebuttals and ask for opinions/ideas. If you have a dispute with someone online. Two rules: 1. Be Nice and 2. Do it on your own turf.
- People don’t believe the hype anymore. That goes for jobs as well as products. Many of the best applicants out there today will research your company to see what their work/life balance will be like. They will go online and find current and past employees to ask about your business. Use your blog to show off your personality and to keep correspondence with your short list of future hires. It can also be an inexpensive way to reach out to online communities to recruit applicants with very specific skill sets.
- The line between traditional mass media and blogs is beyond blurred. The NYTimes has more than 50 blogs. Reporters regularly scour the blogosphere for information, experts and even story ideas. In fact, Twitter and the Blogosphere will often show trending stories and then mysteriously a few days later, a big newspaper will write about it. Bigger papers have always taken stories of interest from smaller papers, now they do it from everyone.
- Nuts About Southwest is a great example of large corporation that maintains an great blog presence. Started in April of 2006 as a way for Southwest to interact with customers. This blog averages between 4,000 and 6,000 visitors a day with more than 400 inbound links. Why does this blog succeed? Real, interesting content and lots of it. Great interaction with customers. Allows tons of comments and even customer posts. They are funny and loose. Not to stuffy and not too overthought. They are entertaining because they allow people from all parts of the business to write posts. They have a lot of contributors.Tell anecdote about their open seating policy. They also do a great job at leveraging their available content. They have a Flickr group with more than 400 members and thousands of photos. They also have a YouTube account with 95 videos and hundreds of “friends”.
- The now infamous Walmarting across America blog. Launched in Sept. of 2006. This folksy blog was supposed to chronicle the journey of Laura and Jim, a couple on their maiden voyage in an RV. They planned to report on their travels and write stories about the people they met. Walmart comes into play be being a free place for them to park each night. This blog ended up being suspiciously positive: “Every Wal-Mart employee that Laura and Jim run into, from store clerks to photogenic executives, absolutely loves to work at the store…Anyone familiar with Walmart and its reputation for being quite stingy with wages and benefits will roll their eyes at such a rosy picture. In fact, some critics are so skeptical that they wonder whether Jim and Laura are real or whether they were concocted at the company’s headquarters in Bentonville, AK.” That appeared in BusinessWeek on 10/8/06Turns out that BusinessWeek was right Jim and Laura’s journey was funded by Working Families for Walmart an astro-turf organization started by Walmart’s PR firm, Edelman. Jim was actually a staff photographer for The Washington Post. Laura, a freelance writer. They received thousands of negative blog posts, comments, and major traditional media stories including stories that ran in Advertising Age, BusinessWeek, Fortune and more. Edelmen responded by apologizing and explaining that they were also faking two other Walmart blogs. Edelman Worldwide was even put on probation for ethical violation from the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), which they helped found. Their mistake here was pretty obvious, don’t lie, don’t manipulate. Another big mistake here: don’t spout only the good. Walmart might have got away with this, if they would have had some realistic articles from real employees. Too much sugar will rot your teeth and your blog.And their new blog, Checkout. Is also suffering from a untrusting public. Beyond their bad reputation, this blog is hurting from something else. No valuable content. It is boring. On the Web, content and king and there is no offering here to bring people back. This blog receives a few hundred hits a day. And this is the nation’s largest retailer. Honestly, there are no interesting stories happening? Impossible. And a big missed opportunity.
- 37Signals: These guys do just about everything right. This is the Signal vs. Noise blog Their most famous product Basecamp was originally built as a side project. At that time, in February of 2004, 37Signals was a web design firm. They launched Basecamp, not with PR blitz or special advertising, but with one blog post. Basecamp now has more than 3 million users. They have 12 employees. They didn’t even start out as an application shop. They were just a Web design firm until Basecamp. 37signals is a web application company. They make many types of software that are meant to make life easier.37Signals regularly posts comments and emails from users on additions or options that they would like to see in their products. They often fix/add these as they go.Even though their major product, Basecamp, has a lot less features than their competitors (they tout that a lot). They have a 94% customer satisfaction. It receives more than 35,000 hits a day on average. They also have more than 91,000 RSS subscribers. They have two blogs: a company version and a product version. The most popular is their company blog. Started in February 2005. Why is it so successful: 37signals is extremely popular because of how freely they give out lessons learned and other assorted advice about software design and the business of software. Each bit of advice has been extrapolated from their experiences. It is written by many people who work there. They focus on interaction with users, new updates and how their product is being used. Twitter: about 14,000 followers.Getting Real: They offer their book as free ebook, a hard copy for $25 and a printable .pdf for $19. They have sold more than 30,000 copies.
- Missing the boat big time. Above is a 20’ x 20 ’billboard that ran in Times Square, NYC. You probably see something wrong with that picture. Well, a blogger Amy Jussell, thought that there was something wrong with it too and she sent Target an inquiry on it. The italicized copy above is the response that she received from Target. Turns out that Amy Jussell’s blog ShapingYouth.org is a blog that covers issues of marketing affecting children. The response itself is not worded that negatively, but if you really look at what it is saying, it is a little crazy.Burn #1: It says that Target is unable to respond to this blogger because they do not work with “non-traditional media outlets”. Well, what about people, do they work with people? Bloggers are not non-traditional media outlets. They are consumers. They are you and you and you and me. Target is basically telling us that we are irrelevant. Burn #2: The second big and shining insult is that Target cannot respond to these “non-traditional media outlet” (blogger, consumers, you and me) because they need to focus on publications that focus on their core guests. Well, a quick Google Blogsearch shows more than 30,000 posts for the search keywords “Target Store”. And Target.com also enjoys more than 10,000 inbound links. So none of these posts or inbound linking blogs count as their “core audience”. Hard to believe.If blogs are receiving 77 million unique visitors a month, I would say that, that sure sounds like the core audience to a big retailer.Burn #3: The third sting to blogger and thusly regular people is the implication that it would cost too much to deal with customer inquiry and criticism, even when (point to picture) it is well founded. If Target doesn’t have the resources to participate with us, then they should make the resources. Take it out of their overinflated media budgets, which topped more than $650 million in 2008. Customer service is marketing. Another instance of Target not getting it:Facebook’sRounders program. Target paid people to write positive posts and comments on Facebook. They were found out and got a lot of negative coverage in December of 2007.
- Okay, so now we are all gonna run back to the office and start a blog for our company. No so fast. Let’s go over 5 quick tips that will help us ensure the success of our new blog. This can be the most important step. My advice is, before you launch your blog take a month and read relevant blogs in your category. Go and check out your competitors’ blogs. Subscribe to podcasts related to your business.Comment, get involved in conversations. Go find groups on the SNS that pertain to your category. Join them, and get updates. Take a side on a relevant issue within your business community. Take a stand. Think about what part of your business you are passionate about. There are also a host of Online reputation monitoring services (ORM) available today that will give you an even more in-depth look at conversations online. Before you start your own publishing, let people know who you are and start building your reputation online. That way you have an audience when you start.
- A Forrester Research study done about one year ago that looked at 90 blogs from Fortune 500 companies, found that most corporate blogs are “dull, drab, and don’t stimulate discussion.” Sadly, two-thirds hardly ever get any comments, 70% stick strictly to business topics, and worse 56% just republish press releases or already public news. Don’t become one of these failed attempts, plan ahead and post often. I would make a schedule of who is going to be posting about what topic and when. Then I would stick to that schedule. Maybe 2-3 posts a week. More if there are a lot of product developments or news. It will help to find someone in your organization who is exceptionally passionate and let them post often. Content: Should include breaking news, product announcements, Internal content: photos or videos, take a stand on a trending story on your market. Be original and inject your own personality. Demonstrate your authority.If you are hard pressed for content contributors or ideas you can just embrace the community out there who is already talking about your category. Let them contribute for you. Many successful blogs and other strong social outlets rely on their audiences to:-Customization-Collaboration-Co-Creation Bad Content: Don’t spend the whole time talking about just your products and services. It needs to be interesting to everyone. Don’t meander around, if you blog lacks focus, it will lack an audience too.
- Be social with your social media. Allow comments (it’s not a blog without comments). Link to other bloggers, even competitors. Hopefully they will link back to you. And by providing a very robust source list (including competitors) you become the ultimate source of information for users. If you are the best source of info, users will submit you to social news sharing sites, tell their friends and bookmark you. Make social bookmarking and social news sharing links available (Move mouse over the image). Make it easy for users to share your content.Provide your contact info. Phone number, emailGo meet the people for real, Tweetups, tradeshows, coffee talk, etc.
- Show your personality and add useful tools. You can do almost anything with a blog. Blogs are today’s most versatile medium. In fact, many companies are using blogs as their main Web vehicles. Customization can go far beyond a custom image header these days. You can easily add widgets or applications that do anything that can imagine. Most of them are free. Add your customized set of RSS feeds in your blogroll. Build a strong About page. This is an often overlooked opportunity. Don’t let it sound too corporate or to short. Many possible readers will judge your personality and authority from this page.
- Now that you are up and running, let’s fine tune. Write bigger stories. Blogs are constantly adaptable. Take advantage of their flexibility. Track and monitor keywords relevant to your category and business. Subscribe to and follow the most significant voices in your category. This way you can constantly be on top of trending topics and stories that might affect your readers. You can comment on popular stories using your blog. Put Google Analytics on your blog. Track your user rates over time. Go and seek out your most consistent readers. Foster a relationship with them. Set site goals.
- There are many, many solutions to finding a cheap, easy blogging platform. I have included in this slide, just a few of the most popular and easiest to use.Blogger: Most popular around 222 million unique hits a month.Wordpress: Second most popular, 114 million uniques a monthTwitter:MicroblogTumblr: Microblog that can do everthing
- Questions?