| SUSAN KELLY | |
| Freelance |
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
|
Blogs are many things to many people - a chance to stand on a virtual soapbox, or swap recipes and the like. They're also the next big thing in e-marketing for small business, experts say.
When U.S. marketing visionary Joseph Jaffe, author of Beyond the 30-Second Spot, was asked to define the term, he wrote in his own blog:
"A blog is a Web log - an evolved form of an online diary, where ... readers can join the conversation by posting as well."
There were about 29.9 million versions of this "evolved diary" worldwide as of early March 2006. That number has doubled every 5.5 months over the past three years, according to Technorati, a search engine for the
"blogosphere." The Blogs Canada website contains roughly 10,000 blog listings.
True, most blogs are more about personal expression - often by people you'd prefer kept quiet - than business promotion. But that should change, and quickly, according to Mitch Joel, founder and president of Twist Image, a Montreal marketing and communications firm. This June, he will present full-day seminars in Toronto and Montreal for the Canadian Marketing Association entitled Blogs: a Marketer's Secret Weapon.
"Blogs are a low-cost marketing tool underused by small business in Canada," he said. Joel says only a handful of firms in this country currently include blogs on their websites. "Yet the notion that a company might have its own online diary fits perfectly with the new prevailing notion in marketing that people want to be told stories, to have conversations," he said.
This e-marketing expert's own campaign began three years ago, when he took a hard look at his own corporate site. He decided it lacked a personal voice, and so decided to exploit skills acquired in a past life as a journalist and set up a daily blog. Joel was amazed at the marked increase in traffic to the site, and estimates his blog continues to generate at least one solid business lead per day.
People logged on to hear his views on business books, new trends in marketing, emerging technologies, conversations with people, upcoming events of interest, the list goes on.
"It gives potential clients an idea of who we are and where we're going with no corporate jargon, and to enter in a dialogue with me, the president, directly," he said.
Joel has used it to promote his company's services, and his own speaking engagements and courses.
He has also leveraged it through search links. When he references prominent people in his field, such as Seth Godin, author of All Marketers are Liars (Penguin 2005), or Tom Peters, author of the now-classic In Search of Excellence, they return the favour, creating what is known as a reciprocated link. The process enhances a site's visibility and generates more traffic.
"It's definitely an exciting marketing tool, but the blog has it's own charms and challenges," cautions Jen Evans, who has worked in technology marketing for a decade and owns Sequentia, a Toronto e-marketing communications firm.
"It can become a time-sucking white elephant if you don't manage it properly."
She advises asking some key questions before adding a blog to the marketing mix.
First, do you have the necessary writing skills backed up by expertise in your field? Like Joel, you must have both style and something to say that will make people want to come back. Otherwise, you will have to hire a content researcher and/or writer, which will add to the costs.
"You can get around this by enlisting other contributors from among your colleagues," Evans said. "Also, some blogs are less about text and more about graphics, or links to other sites or blogs."
And can you produce enough content to keep a blog fresh week after week? Although many people think of blogs as a techie phenomenon, they're really more topic-driven, Evans noted. Most experts recommend that a blog be posted once or twice weekly, daily if possible. Which is a lot of topics.
Among blogging's charms is the ease of production.
"A newsletter is often very big and formal vehicle to produce, whereas a blog entry can take a few minutes," she said.
Even with very little techno savvy, it's possible to set up a blog in a few minutes and for free through such sites as Blogger.com, which is owned by Google. "And if you decide it's not for you, you can just stop."
Blogs can be used to promote almost any industry, not just communications or technology-related ones. Case in point: the ever-increasing number of what are known as "mommy blogs," most of which are non-commercial, simply mothers around the world sharing tips and stories.
Alyson Shafer, a Toronto psychotherapist and mother of two pre-teens, credits her weekly mommy blog with springboarding her career. It allowed her to leverage her website on parenting issues into a thriving small business with a mix of teaching, coaching and her own television show on Rogers, The Parenting Show.
She began to blog 21/2 years ago at the prompting of husband, Ken Shafer, who publishes One Degree, a resource website for Internet marketing professionals.
At first she balked, reluctant to give away the advice she hoped people would pay for.
"Strangely, the more I gave away, the more business I got. And it helped establish me as an expert in the field almost immediately," she said. "In a sense, I'm pre-qualified, because it's all out there on the site. So they are then more likely to sign up for coaching or a course."
A weekly blog also increases one's chances of being picked up by a search engine like Google. For Shafer, that has meant journalists could find her more easily. She has been called upon to comment for national magazines such as Today's Parent, Chatelaine and Canadian Living, and for local TV and radio shows. And she landed a book contract from Wiley Canada for Breaking the Good Mom Myth, slated for release in November.
"The publisher approached me," she said. "And they found me on the Web through my blog."
