With today's accelerated pace of social broadcast platform introductions, it is easy to think of blogs as an old tactic - easily tossed aside in favor of the new shiny social tech toy that's ever so cool. Blogs have become the tech cast-off's plummeting from being the poster child of the social revolution to a social "has-been" in barely 24 months.
Yet I encourage us to ignore the dearth of articles declaring blogs dead because well used, blogs are a powerhouse platform that lets companies share ideas, deepen customer engagement and get business inspiration not possible in any short form. Successful examples of bloggers abound - most notably TechCrunch's catapult to journalistic credibility from its humble beginnings as a slightly irreverent "in love with tech" blog site. Or as a more business orientated blog, Mark Suster's "both sides of table" is a gem of a blog that provides real insight into the quirky VC/ venture/ tech frothy world. His consistently high quality content is a great way to bring new audiences to his thinking which no doubt results in new connections not possible otherwise.
So before you relegate blogs to the social dust bin, here the top 5 reasons why blogs are critical for business (and why we continue to love them).
1) Blogs are efficient ways to generate qualified traffic.
It's true - blogs can't usually generate tons of new traffic - but it can generate qualified traffic which is even better. The trick is to have a clear-cut content strategy because without it I can assure you the effort will fail. The approach we use to develop a content strategy is to identify specific topics that will be discussed from different angles over a specific time frame, (e.g. two weeks). To strengthen its traffic building muscle - it's ideal to introduce outside advocates or customers or vendors in the blog post to make your point. Be sure to tell these people that you have included them via Twitter or LinkedIn etc. That's how your viral machine starts to turn.
2) Blogs are a great way to test different ideas.
Blogs bring the notion of crowdsourcing down to a manageable level. A blog can explore business concepts or a particular feature set or a channel idea. Again, using social media like Twitter, you can ask people for their opinions. You won't get hundreds of responses but you're likely to get a couple of responses from people who really care - and that's who YOU really care about anyway. Over time, the results you get from blog comments can be rich and nourishing.
3) Blogs give a personal face to an impersonal company.
Any salesperson knows that people want to buy from people they like. Companies traditionally spend billions creating well-designed branding programs to achieve this level of likeability. A blog is a key and inexpensive element in a company's branding arsenal. The ability for prospects or customer to connect to a real person within a company makes it an ideal platform to create relationships that can lead to business. That's why blogs have the potential to be a central pillar in your corporate branding toolkit.
4) Blogs allow customers and prospects to get an inside view into how your company does business.
A blog written by a lead product developer explaining a particular underused feature set is interesting and useful. However a blog written by that same person discussing how he was inspired to create the specific feature set is hugely engaging. It gives people context to understand why your offering is better than the competition. That sets the stage for engaging your customers or prospects in the creation of future products.
5) A blog provides a strategic time capsule of how a company is evolving.
Companies are organic in the sense that they have a lifecycle - in every sense of the word. If you step back and look at the flow of a corporate blog, you get a very accurate snapshot of the company's focus, innovative capacity and most importantly, a glimpse into what a company might do in the future. This should be thought of as a huge digital asset requiring attention as it can be the tipping point for whether a strategic partnership goes through or how a potential investor views your company. Most obviously, blogs are a powerful lens about your company that the press will regularly view a company through.
My intention here is to remind us that the value of a well-tended corporate blog is that it is a "no fail" business branding tool that pays dividends the longer it remains relevant. So the next time a social media expert disses blogs, remember blogs are about as old-fashioned as the thinking of the person who uses them. Blogs done right are blogs that help build businesses.
Want proof? You're reading this blog - aren't you!
Judy Shapiro
P.S. I dedicate this post to a dear colleague who is starting a new corporate blog. May she be inspired to appreciate how blogs allow a company to leverage the power of social marketing.