No matter how well-designed a traditional website is, it doesn't stand a chance against a well-crafted and lovingly maintained blog.
Small biz owners have been on to this from the get-go--there was a time when blogging as a means of connecting with existing and potential customers was strictly in the realm of small biz owners.
After all, blogs are perfectly suited to small biz marketing--they're affordable (about $9/month with TypePad or free if you use WordPress), have an instant, global reach, are easy to maintain, and the personal interaction you get when reading the blog of the owner of a small business is much more welcoming than looking at an "official" business website where personality, warmth, and humor take a back seat to the business-y side of a business.
The bottom line is, no matter how internet savvy we are, no matter how comfortable we are with working virtually with people we may never meet in person, we're still hungry for genuine human interaction.
While our idea of what qualifies as "human interaction" has broadened considerably (note the popularity of online dating, MySpace, online disussion and networking groups, instant messaging, email, and blogging), it's clear that most of us prefer doing business with people we like and who treat us like human beings, not numbers.
And thus the concept of small business blogging as a way of connecting with clients was born.
But, you know, you can't keep a good thing a secret for long.
Weblogs, the small biz owner's marketing secret weapon, are slowly reaching the mainstream and infiltrating big businesses worldwide.
Let's take a look at some fresh, hot online marketing developments that have come out within the last month or so:
Exhibit A: Six Apart's Business Blog Seminars. Last month, Six Apart (owner of TypePad and Moveable Type) launched a major publicity campaign aided by PR powerhouse Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide aimed at spoon-feeding the idea of business blogging to corporations.
After all, we know that big corporations are always a few steps (perhaps light years) behind techno-geeks and savvy small biz owners ;-) and need a little help catching up.
Getting the corporate world up to speed with blogging is a great idea, but what's funny is that all these events are in-person seminars, not virtual or online. You have to actually go to a major city and drive to a physical building and meet in a conference room--that's so 1999! ;-)
But I'm sure Six Apart is doing it this way for a reason--they're spoon-feeding online marketing to corporate folks one baby bite at a time.
You know, it's one thing to explain what a blog is, but it's perhaps too much to ask to use e-learning and virtual classrooms to get that intial point across. Moving forward one baby step at a time...
Also worth looking at: How To Sell Social Software, an article about Six Apart's mission to bring their blogging software to the mainstream.
Exhibit B: The Blog Business Summit. The Business Blog Summit, is taking place this week (October 25-27), and it's being hosted by a ton of business blogging big-wigs such as Robert Scoble (former lead blogger at Microsoft), Matt Mullenweg (founding developer of WordPress), Jason Calacanis (CEO of Weblogs, Inc. and General Manager of Netscape.com), Maryam Scoble, Janet Johnson, Steve Broback, John Furrier, and DL Byron.
You can look here to see what makes these other folks big-wigs. (That's okay, I don't recognize their names either :-). But trust me, they're famous in the blogosphere.)
Exhibit C: Blogging for Business event (London), also taking place this week. Same story, different location. An internet marketing consultancy courting big businesses.
Exhibit D: Software vendors are creating new weblog products that are user-friendly for big corporations.
From Revenge of the Suits: Companies Show How To Blog:
"Market leader Six Apart last week released Movable Type Enterprise 1.5, designed to support more blogs and participants than the previous version. The upgrade lets IT administrators grant more access rights and permissions through integration with directory services--allowing them, for example, to define whether certain groups of people can make comments--and aggregate multiple blogs into a single portal. Administrators can reuse blog-creation templates and the rights and permissions rules they've set up for additional blogs."
Six Apart has also launched TypePad Business Class "the only hosted blogging solution specifically designed for business".
BTW--if you're a small biz owner who has a blog on TypePad, you don't need to switch it to the TypePad Business Class platform. This new tool is pricey--try $90-$125/month (ouch!) --and much more than most small biz owners need.
I'm sticking with my $9 a month TypePad account.
I rest my case. My email gets flooded every week with Google Alerts on business blogging events and developments, so I could go on and on with this stuff. These examples are enough--you get the idea. Corporations are beginning to investigate how they can use blogs.
So what does all this mean? Well, we've got a long way to go before blogging is a mainstream thing, but the wheels are in motion. Very exciting!
For now, we small biz owners and techno-geeks still rule the blogosphere, but within the next few years, we should be getting some corporate company.
That's fine with me. I think big corporations will be able to integrate blogging into their marketing and make themselves more approachable and interesting (you know, not so boring and business-y), but small biz marketing and big biz blogging are apples and oranges as far as I'm concerned.
Will small biz blogs still be able to compete when corporate blogs show up on the scene? Yes!
No matter how much money or power a business has, it still has to play be the rules of the blogosphere.
You know, Google doesn't care how big your business is--you could be blogging from a posh corner office in a 50 story skyscraper, or your office could be your kitchen table in your apartment.
Doesn't matter. The same rules apply for everyone.
Google respects quality content, inbound links, longevity (start blogging now!) and heftiness (lots-o-posts). It doesn't care about how much you pay for your blogging platform service or how much your blog template did or didn't cost you.
It'll be interesting to see if embracing blogging actually changes the way big corporations do business and treat their customers.
Blogs promote intimacy, community, and informal communication, and those are things you just can't fake or pay someone to do for you.
The folks who do the corporate blogging need to be real people expressing heartfelt ideas. A corporate blog can't just be the stylized product of a PR firm, or else that blog is going to die a quick and lonely death.
If big businesses want to be control freaks about their public image and not deal with candid comments from readers, they might as well stick to just having traditional websites.
In order to make blogs work on the corporate level, big businesses will have to reconcile themselves to being honest and more vulnerable with their customers.
They have to be prepared to let people express opposing opinions on relevant topics, and to let a genuine interaction take place. They need to not be afraid to link to outside blogs, and they need to cultivate a feeling of community.
Perhaps blogging, communicating with customers on a daily basis in a personal, friendly, informal manner, will help big businesses serve us better and treat us (as customers) more kindly. Who knows, it might. Hopefully it will.
Sharon ... excellent points! You know even the well-known bloggers have only been blogging for relatively short periods of time.
The important thing to remember is that it is all new. We are essentially making it up as we go along -- there really aren't any rules. Well there is one ... don't try to fake out your audience -- we will sniff you out.
And the other rule ... try it for yourself. That is, you can't be taught blogging without actually blogging. It really is a medium that you must become involved in to understand ... and the more you learn, the more there is to learn.
Posted by: Gavin Heaton | October 25, 2006 at 07:43 AM
Right on Gavin!
It's funny how when someone has a blog that's 4 years old, that that person is regarded as a veteran blogger. It's so true--blogging is a new medium.
I read that Mena Trott & Ben became interested in blogging in 2001. Mind you--they didn't create Six Apart in 2001, they just started getting interested in blogging. Ha! Things sure do move fast in the blogosphere :-).
Darren Rowse (www.problogger.net) started his first blog in 2002 and is now a 6 figure blogger and co-owner of B5 Media. Andy (www.andywibbels.com) started blogging back in 2000 and last year had his first book published (of course it's about blogging!) and is getting major mainstream media attention. Seth Godin started in 2002 and Guy Kawasaki started his blog just this year!
Oh, you get the idea--this is uncharted territory and we are making this up as we go along. And it's so encouraging to folks who are just starting to blog or are about to start blogging, because, who knows--they could be the new superstars of the blogosphere in just a short period of time.
The thing is, I don't know how much big corporations like to venture into uncharted territory and participate in activities where there are no real rules (save the rules of SEO and being authentic).
The corporate companies I've worked with seem to thrive on rules. They like to have procedures and documentation for everything. They don't like employees to publicly express ideas that aren't perfectly in line with the public image of the company. Most corporate companies seem to bask in predictabililty, so when they venture into blogging, it's going to be interesting!
Posted by: Sharon | October 25, 2006 at 12:03 PM
I find this information very useful. Great work! We study this article on the regular basis :-). And we recommend this to every body.
Posted by: dissertation writing service | August 05, 2009 at 11:57 PM
I agree. Blogging is one way to meet new clients. It's actually where it all started. And business people love the results of this strategy on their sales. Thanks for sharing them. It's definitely a nice article.
Posted by: Search Engine Optimization | July 17, 2010 at 03:11 AM