RightSpot Media | Digital Performance Marketing

Blogs can be mightier than a sword

Posted on Tuesday, August 21st, 2007 at 12:21 AM by Jerry Smith  |  Comments (0)

The internet continues to provide plenty of opportunities to businesses on the one hand, while creating potential problems for us marketing people on the other.

A good example is consumer-driven media, and particularly blogs. Last year, marketing intelligence firm Sirius Decisions conducted a survey to evaluate the prevalence of blogs in a b-to-b environment, and how they would impact a marketing mix.

The result of their analysis, authored by Sirius CEO Ally Motz, was most interesting, and together with additional syndicated research, led to five key planning assumptions that b-to-b marketers should consider in regard to consumer-driven media:

"Blogs are prevalent enough to impact corporate reputation"

After intense and systematic analysis of the literature, researchers in 2006 placed blog output in excess of 900 million. Additional factors were subsequently analyzed by the Sirius study, which found that 13% of content on the web was blog-generated, with the balance of 87% coming from traditional sources such as newspapers, journals, magazines and the like. The number of blogs has certainly increased since the study was undertaken and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

"The tone of blogs is decidedly negative"

Interestingly, 57% of all posts expressed some sort of negative feeling. What does all of this mean? Many times we have seen blogs seethe with rumor and innuendo when discussing a company’s products and services. This often happens even before the information becomes officially public. This means that businesses that can detect rumors early enough can also prepare themselves to deal with the issues before they have serious ramifications and, in some cases, even silence them altogether. This, of course, requires a vigorous and systematic response plan.

"There is a lot to learn from the remaining posts"

Even though there are a lot of negatives to blogs, the study also pointed to a significant amount of positive or even neutral information that they provided. Blogs can even provide, in some instances, more productive results in a marketing sense than focus groups. In fact, in a great many instances, focus groups take place in an "artificial environment," and so it is no surprise that in many instances they produce "questionable results." Blogs, on the other hand, report on a company’s products and services in a "real" environment.

"Opportunities for blogs go way beyond consumer media"

Blogging can also provide b-to-b sales and marketing organizations unique opportunities to positively utilize the information within, to share ideas within a context of unique sales scenarios at various public events. Sales people can be taught how to effectively translate the meaning of a blog as it relates to their enterprise, capture its essence and "convert" it to good use for the overall benefit of their organization. Markets are in a state of continual change. Especially for sales people and marketing folks, what better way is there for them to stay tuned then to "take the pulse" of their organization, note the reasons why things are happening and then utilize the information to improve their products and services. Then, too, notes the Sirius study, "sales blogs can become quite dangerous if they are not managed properly." But properly managed, blogs for sales can be great for both delivering and collecting information.

"Effective monitoring is the key to building a blog strategy"

Just a few years ago, monitoring and managing blogs and other consumer-driven media was challenging, but new technology and new businesses have sprung up to fill the gap. As blogs become an increasingly important and common communication tool, ignoring them is no longer an option, while learning to actively use them presents a huge opportunity.

Tags: blogs