BCA

By John Riley

The thrill of participation, the engagement with others and the reward when one of your articles sparks a positive reaction to your product, your company or your blog, that’s what motivates today’s enterprising bloggers.  It’s what most of them will tell you. Bloggers relish their freedom to comment on the issues of the day, or for that matter, any subject at any time, to the Internet world and beyond. And they do. Politics, gardening, praise and criticism of products, companies, education, sex, etc. Nothing is off limits.

 Blogs have become part of the social media sweeping the country. This community of teenagers, Gen X and Y, boomers and seniors have evolved into what is now referred to as the blogosphere and it grows by the day. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter and other such vehicles for building online relationships interface regularly with blogs. Companies have found blogs are an excellent way to promote and sell their products, reduce their cost of selling, and strengthen their customer relationship management efforts. Additionally, companies can monitor customer’s  reactions to their products and services and provide early detection of customer or government issues that could adversely affect their business. 

 After belatedly accepting this phenomenon, Rileybiz.com, now .org, entered the blogosphere a few months ago.

Blog History

 While browsing in the Barnes and Noble bookstore one summer day in 2006, I came across a book entitled, “Blog” by Hugh Hewitt. Intrigued with the prologue on the flyleaf touting the success of his blog that had attracted over ten million visitors in four years, I bought the book.

I had to find out if this Internet phenomenon had any serious applications for business.

 As I read the book, I learned the first blog appeared in 1999 and by 2004, there were over 4 million sites. According to Hewitt, the key to attracting visitors was content… the better the content the more visitors you could expect. The power to interact with the Internet world was heady stuff and it was easy to understand it’s appeal. That day in 2006, I concluded blogging definitely had potential as a business tool, but it would take several years to mature. Needless to say, my timing was way off.

 Currently, eMarketer says there are 27.9 million blogs in the United States. The decline in newspaper readership and television viewing is evidence of the impact of blogs and the Internet.

 “Blogs are now mainstream media”, says Richard Jalichandra, CEO of Technorati, an Internet search engine for blogs.  “You’re also seeing media coming in the other direction by adding media content.” There’s a good reason. eMarketer estimates that in 2009, U.S. Internet users will read a blog at least once a month. By 2013, the estimate is 128.2 million people, or 58% of all U.S. users will do the same.

Want to Start Blogging? Here’s how

 Blog platforms are ‘lost leaders’. A number of Internet organizations offer free blogs in the hope you will want to later upgrade your blog or add more functions to expand its capabilities.

 1)     Blogger.com, WordPress.com and Blog.com are three good operators. After you sign up for the free blog, you receive a ‘turn key’ operation…a robust blog with excellent functional capabilities.

 2)     You can then use your host assigned URL, WordPress in my case, or go to GoDaddy.com and buy a domain name. The name of your blog can be your URL/domain name or  something different. Next, develop a clear idea of the subject you want to focus on. It can be politics, marketing, gardening, orchids, food, movies, nursing, whatever.

 3)     When your blog is in operation, your primary task will always be preparing content. That is what attracts visitors, but it needs to be refreshed regularly. I try to post two new articles each week and occasionally include guest authors. While content attracts visitors, there are other traffic building techniques you can also employ.

 4)     From there  it’s simply a matter of becoming more familiar with how the blog operates. Its not complicated. The best documentation I have found is, “Wordpress for Dummies” by Lisa Sabin-Wilson, but you can Google articles on the Internet that can also provide information.   

 After gaining experience with your basic blog, you may decide to upgrade to a more robust blog. That’s more challenging and will be the subject of my next article.

November 11, 2009

Gaining visibility as thought leaders

eMarketer estimates nearly 28 million US Internet users write a blog in 2009, and those bloggers run the gamut from hobbyists and part-timers to self-employed and corporate bloggers.

According to a Technorati survey of bloggers worldwide, most are men, ages 18 to 44, affluent and well-educated. About one-quarter work for a traditional media outlet in addition to blogging, and most still don’t make any money from their self-publishing activities. But there are other ways to create value.

Fully 70% of bloggers polled by Technorati said they talked about products or brands on their blog. The most common activity was to post about brands they loved—or hated—as well as to write reviews or post about experiences with stores or customer service.

Bloggers who post about products and services may get some attention from brands in the form of free items and other perks—enough to attract the notice of the US Federal Trade Commission, at least—but the visibility they gain through publishing their thoughts also helps them in less-tangible ways.

Nearly six in 10 of all the bloggers surveyed said they were better known in their industry because of their blog, and one-quarter had used their blog as a resume or sent it to potential employers.

Further, bloggers who post for a business reported even higher levels of success: 71% had increased visibility for their company, 63% had converted prospects into purchasers through their blog, and 56% have seen their blog bring their company recognition as a thought leader in the industry.

Negative personal consequences, such as losing focus on work or getting in trouble on the job, were far less common than gaining visibility or even changing professions entirely based on blogging activity.

Printed with permission of emarketer.com