News outlets today are abuzz with stories about blogs. In January 2005, Fortune magazine featured a story called “Why There’s No Escaping the Blog.” In May of the same year, “Blogs Will Change Your Business” screamed from the cover of Business- Week. Blogs have become so hot that some mainstream TV news reporters are quoting from the more popular blogs on the air. Unfortunately, despite all the press coverage, little is being published about how blogs can benefit you and your business. Blogs are not only here to stay, but they will have an effect on your business. The question is, will you use blogs to benefit your business, or will you ignore them and perhaps experience a negative consequence that takes you completely by surprise?

The power of blogging has certainly taken some by surprise. A major bike lock company was shocked when news surfaced in blogs that a pen could be used to open one of its world-famous locks. It resulted in a huge financial hit for the company, which offered to exchange potentially faulty locks with different models. Thankfully, plenty of positive stories resulting from blogs have also surfaced stories of companies embracing the world of blogging and seeing massive expansion, goodwill, and visibility as a result. Blogging is a communication tool, a marketing technique, a listening device, and a way to interact directly with customers one-to-one on a global scale. A business can learn a lot by reading blogs to determine what customers and non-customers alike are saying about the business.

Your business can benefit by using blogs to spread the word about what your company has to offer its customers and to gain immediate feedback from customers. Perhaps you’ve seen blogging featured on the covers of major business magazines, or you’ve started seeing notices about blogging conferences around the world. Perhaps you are simply curious about this tool that could revolutionize the way you think about your customers and conduct business. No matter where you’re at in the spectrum, this article is for you. If you are interested in the future of your company, you need to understand blogging.

A Reader’s Guide to Blog Marketing Throughout this article, I’ll explore why and how companies of all types blog and explain how you can get the most out of blogging for your own business. Initially, I’ll cover the basics, such as getting into the mindset of blogging. The concept of open communication with customers is a foreign idea to many companies, but the ability to understand the value of blogging as a medium will help you understand how it fits into the business world and how it fits into your business plans. A central concept of the article will be transmitting versus engaging.

Most corporate communications are simply one-way missives transmitting information to customers whereas with blogs, the company can engage, or have a two-way dialogue, with customers. It can take a while for companies to make the leap from the transmitting to the engaging mindset, so I’ll be revisiting this concept throughout the article. Blogging is a strong engagement medium, and the people who read blogs expect to be engaged, which is one of the reasons this article is so important few businesses are comfortable with the concept of engaging, and many don’t know how to engage with customers. Another central theme will be how blogging allows you to create positive experiences with your customers positive experiences can completely change the way your customers view you and your business. The more you value your customers, the more these positive experiences will occur, and the more successful your business will be.

A happy customer sends other happy customers your way. I’ll also look at how successful companies are using blogs to extend their brands, interact directly with customers, and get real feedback on their company and products and how you can do the same. You’ll find that direct customer feedback is one of your most valuable assets. Customers know your business better than you ever will, and they’re usually happy to share their ideas with you if you ask for them. Later in the article, we’ll explore how your company can use blogs both externally and internally, and we’ll look at examples from numerous companies (including General Motors, Disney, and Stonyfield Farm) to see what lessons they have learned. Tracking the world of blogs can be a challenge, which is why I’ll spend a significant amount of time discussing how to track blogs, what information can be gleaned from that tracking, and how to put the information to good use. I’ll also talk about how to respond to comments on your blogs, how to respect your readers, and how to deal with the gold mine of blogging: negative feedback.

Finally, I’ll look at how blogging will change your business, how it will impact the bottom line, and how you can develop a successful blogging strategy so that you will enter the market with the fewest mistakes possible. I’ll close with input from business and blogging leaders on where blogging is going because it’s difficult to prepare for the future if you don’t know what that future could be. Although thousands of new business blogs are being created each month, until now, no solid guidearticle has shown you exactly what blogs are doing and how businesses can take advantage of them.

Blog Marketing is the guidearticle that will help you with your blogging endeavors. It provides the framework, but only you can provide the desire, drive, and creativity necessary to make blogs a reality at your company. The Article Blog I’ve created a blog for this article to continue the information flow and learning, at www.blogmarketingarticle.com. Check it out to see examples of businesses that are blogging successfully, and feel free to share your own stories as well. I hope this article will challenge you to rethink the way you look at your customers, employees, and relationships, as well as your company’s marketing and communication strategies. If you grasp not just the act of how to blog, but also the concepts that are central to blogging, you can revolutionize your business and attract more customers and the attention of competitors and entire industry.

BLOGGING BASICS

Arnold Adams is the harried owner of Everywhere Signs. He has no time. His typical day is a blur of action and reaction: 7:12 checking voice mail while driving into work. 7:30 opening office and checking drop box for orders. 8:00 getting work assignments for employees. 9:00–12:00 managing work of employees, answering phones, taking walk in orders. 12:00–1:00 lunching with Big Important Client. 1:00–5:00 overseeing sign delivery and setup. 5:00–6:00 accounting work, including calling customers about late payments. 6:00–7:00 all other work, including answering e mail. So, when June Marzipan, his hipper-than-thou web guru, said that he needed a blog, his second reaction was, of course, “I have no time.” His first reaction was, “What the hell’s a blog?” After five years with a website, thanks to June, he was just starting to understand how the online world worked. He loved his website it was colorful, well-organized, and, more importantly, brought in business. It was up there 24/7, 365 days a year, taking orders from customers who loved the idea of not having to come into the shop to order a sign. And he loved the idea of taking their money for something so easy. But June was staring at him, with her disconcertingly pink hair (when did that happen?). He had to say something. “Is a blog a noun? A verb? Why do you Internet people have to make up words?” “Both and because,” June said.

I magine that you could listen, like a fly on the wall, to millions of people your customers, employees, competitors, partners, and the media as they talk about your business, your marketing process, your advertising, and your products. Now imagine that you could use this up-to-the-minute information to determine what your customers want, how they want it, what they will ultimately buy, and what they’re willing to pay for it. This is the power of the blog. Basing your business decisions on customer feedback and market intelligence is probably the smartest business move you could ever make.

And weblogs, also known as blogs, are allowing companies to do just that. In fact, blogs have the potential not only to change the way you communicate with customers, raise your visibility, and get you direct customer feedback, but they can also transform the way your company does business internally. Using blogs can help you reduce e-mail overload, facilitate the brainstorming process to generate new ideas more quickly, and simplify a variety of project management tasks.

Blogs are so powerful that to say they will revolutionize your business is an understatement blogs have the power to create businesses, change the course of political history, and transform the way the mainstream media looks at itself. Basing your business decisions on actual customer feedback and market intelligence is the smartest business move you could ever make. Like every major communication tool, blogs expand the ability for companies to operate and ultimately to create entirely new opportunities for growth, product development, and quality control. However, blogs take this communication a step further by bringing the best aspects of mass marketing and transforming them from one-way communication into a two-way dialogue.

As I write this article in the summer of 2005, between 50 million and 100 million bloggers are actively communicating on the Internet, with the number of blog readers estimated at between 200 million and 500 million, according to The Blog Herald. These numbers are difficult to pin down, mainly because the only conclusive studies are for North America; nevertheless, the number of blogs, bloggers, and blog readers is massive. In its May 2, 2005, issue, BusinessWeek magazine estimated that about 40,000 new blogs are posting information every day. Blogging grew from the ground up as a grassroots effort. What started as a few people conversing about common interests via real-time Internet postings has become a continuous conversation among millions of bloggers and readers. The most powerful thing about blogging isn’t the technology; it’s this massive community driving the blogosphere.

With millions of bloggers expressing their thoughts, experiences, and information they’ve learned in their fields of interest, this medium has become a worldwide forum. Part of this conversation may be about your company, which can be good news or bad. The worst news, however, would be if none of the millions of voices out there were talking about your company or its products.

IT’S ABOUT COMMUNICATION

The reality is that blogging is a medium. Blogging is also a content style. Because the earliest blogs were built on the principles of an authentic voice, honesty, and authority, most blogs are expected to have those qualities this holds true even more so for the corporate blog. Blog readers (even brand new ones) are so conditioned to reading a personal voice on blogs that they expect it from companies, too. This presents unique challenges for business leaders who want to understand blogging, as the concepts of transparency and authenticity are not often associated with corporate communications practices. Because they’re publicly available on the Internet, blogs are wide open, ready to interact with all of your customers.

Blogs let customers hear what is on your mind, and they create a space for customers to tell you exactly what they are thinking about. Blogs are the next best thing to going door-to-door to each of your customers’ homes or offices; they give you and your company a way to create and sustain real relationships with real people. Past marketing efforts were always transmissions from companies one-way communications aimed at as wide an audience as possible, such as advertisements, popup windows on the Internet, and the like. With blogs, however, you’re engaging with your customers, as every reader is reading your blog by choice, every reader is choosing to interact with your business, and every reader wants to hear more from you. This powerful new way of communicating creates and empowers customer evangelists in ways that were practically impossible before blogs existed.