I’m Building a Marketing Blog — Not!!!
View CommentsThough it may be the marketing department who builds a blog, and it may be a marketer who writes and interacts with the readers who visit, a blog is not a marketing venue. Blogs made for marketing are likely to fail.
Gary Sterling said it well last October in the Business Tools and Advice column of BusinessWeekonline. The column he wrote was called, Internet & E-Commerce. What he said was
Blogs that are merely transparent marketing vehicles and carry only ad copy or promotional messages are probably destined to fail. They will likely be ignored because they’re not perceived to have any real content or value.
There’s too much noise on the Internet for people to waste time reading your blog if they’re not getting any helpful or interesting information. However, a blog that doesn’t in some way promote your products or service is, by definition, not a marketing vehicle. Finding the right balance between promotional copy and informational content is where the art of marketing comes in.
You should really see your blog as a way to make people aware of your products and services rather than as a source of direct sales. Generally, blogging is probably better suited for service providers (where reputation and other intangibles apply) than for product sellers (where price or location are typically bigger factors).
Or to use another popular phrase, blogs should helpful not hypeful. (Wish I could remember who it was that said that.)’
What Gary is saying is that I don’t have reason, or time, or need for you to sell me a proudct that I don’t want, and I know how to leave you. You can’t follow me. However, you could offer me something that I might find useful. Blogs that do that get my readership.
For example, content and informational articles such as “Ten things to do before selling your home” or “How to minimize closing costs” or “Should I get an ARM or a 30-year fixed loan” are going to be valuable content and ultimately help build “your brand.” If you don’t have time to generate original posts — although blogs can be informal and posts relatively short — you can write introductions or summaries of publicly available articles related to your business or industry and post links to third-party sites on your blog.
You see, once again the world has been turn upside down and inside out. I no longer have to listen, I can walk away or just not be there. I can ignore you.
The object now is to get my attention, not to sell me. I know what I want and what kind of company I want to buy from. It’s one that provides for me, not one that markets to my eyeballs.
Can you be that?
Liz Strauss
