Blogging is becoming an ever more familiar word within the B2B marketing sphere. A medium that was once considered little more than a communications tool between teenagers, thanks to the likes of MySpace, is now being seized upon by companies as a credible marketing tool.
Considering the ease with which a weblog can be set up, it’s not hard to see why so many are keen to jump on the bandwagon. But marketers should not lose sight of the fact that blogging is a form of social interaction, and therefore comes with its own form of social etiquette. Merely starting a blog does not guarantee success. In fact get it wrong, and it could do more harm than good to your company and your brand image.
To blog or not to blog?
Deciding to use a blog as a way of marketing yourself is a trickier minefield than you might imagine. While the act of setting one up couldn’t be simpler, you need to give careful consideration to a blog’s content before you consider going live, says Antony Mayfield, head of content and media at online search agency Spannerworks. “A lot of corporate blogs are effectively dead wood and that’s because companies ignore the fact that blogging is a form of social media,” he says. “The crucial word is ‘social.’ Forget about the fact that technology is involved and think of blogging as a networking tool.”
Networking is a key word that crops up time and again amongst marketers considering blog potential. Mayfield says that it’s crucial to understand the networking potential in order to be the owner of a successful blog. “Blogs that are out of context are pointless,” he says. “They’ve got to be connected into networks.”
“There is no point in having a blog unless you have something to say,” agrees Andrew Hood, managing director at analytical software engine Lynchpin. “There is nothing worse than a company whose blog is static.”
An example of a static blog is one that contains little more than what might be found written in the average press release. While it’s quite acceptable to shout about how great your products and services are on your company website, a blog is not the place to do this. Walmart made this fatal mistake last year. It set up a social network similar to MySpace aimed at teens, which backfired when it was discovered it has planted Walmart-loving actors, posing as kids, on the site. (Posts such as “looking hot in my Wal-Mart clothes to school to catch a cute boy’s eye” weren’t too hard to spot.)
Rather, a blog should be used as a way of making contacts, showing off your areas of expertise and gaining customer loyalty in your brand. Darren Strange, UK product manager at Microsoft Office has been running his own company blog since 2005. “I tend to write more opinion-based copy than about features of our products,” he says. “It’s about engaging with customers, partners and analysts and getting people to think about issues.”
A friendlier face
Allowing employees to represent the company in blog form isn’t an unusual concept. Strange started his blog at the suggestion of his boss and during the run up to the launch of the latest version of Microsoft Office. In fact, Microsoft actively encourages its employees to blog and opinion suggests that in doing so it has boosted the perception of its brand enormously.
In April it extended its active blogging community with the launch of Channel 9, a site aimed at nurturing a dialogue with developers through features including a blog, video, RSS feeds, wikis and forums. A line in Channel 9’s doctrine reads, “Marketing has no place on Channel 9. The site was named after an in-flight audio channel that enables passengers to hear what is going on in airplane cockpits. One of Channel 9’s creators has been quoted as saying, “We think developers need their own Channel 9, a way to listen in to the cockpit at Microsoft, an opportunity to learn how we fly.”
David Crane, managing director at online analytics company 23 thinks that the launch of Channel 9 was a positive move. “In the past Microsoft has been perceived by those on the outside as an evil corporation. But by letting people in and showing them how processes take place, it helps them to understand and melts away some of that perception,” he says.
The personal touch
Smaller companies are now starting to model their own blogs on Microsoft’s template. Internet application development agency Bit10 has been allowing its staff to blog for the past nine months and strategic director Ben King says the benefits are measurable. “We see weeks where the blogs get more hits than our website,” he says. The employees at Bit10 are encouraged to blog not just about their technological expertise, but about their personal lives too. This has two advantages, according to King. “Part of how we promote ourselves is as being a friendly, approachable company, so it works for us. Plus, it increases our chances of getting hits from non (company) related subjects. The more cross-linking you get in this way, the more people reference your website and the higher your ranking on search engines.”
King believes there is often little point in a company setting up a blog if it isn’t prepared to let its employees get openly involved. When a financial services company approached Bit10 about setting up a blog, he pointed out that their approach to the medium was all wrong. “They were only interested in having their top guys do the blog and there was a sense that they only really wanted to do it because they thought it was what was cool. They wanted to put so many guidelines in place that it would effectively read like PR spin.” This isn’t to say that companies shouldn’t have some kind of blogging policy in place. Bit10 has laid out guidelines for blogging staff which are laid out in a policy document.
Laurence Rees, a partner at law firm Reed Smith Richards Butler stresses that an employee policy is good practice if you’re going to allow them to blog. “As long as you make it clear to them that the blog is being used as a business tool and not as a personal thing, they’ll follow the policy you lay down,” he says. “It’s necessary to ensure that people aren’t putting confidential or inaccurate information on your blog.”
Inaccurate information might be considered damaging, but by the same token some believe that there is nothing wrong with admitting the odd shortcoming. “If you speak honestly with your audience and talk through some of the difficulties you have faced and the processes you have gone through to overcome them, it often warms people to you even more,” points out Crane.
Benefits for all
For smaller B2B businesses, many of which are often trying to throw themselves at a niche market, blogging has the potential to be an especially potent tool. “For a lot of smaller companies, the challenge is often how to reach their niche markets through the media,” says Mayfield. “Networks of bloggers can quickly build up a niche network. If your blog is alive and interesting, it will attract like-minded bloggers to it who will then link into it so that before you know it, you’re part of a network of people relevant to your sector.”
Mayfield adds that the best way for a small company to research a successful blog is to start by subscribing to other blogs relevant to its sector and post comments on those. “It’s the best way to understand the whole networking infrastructure. Too often, people think of blogs as one harmonious lump of media when they’re not,” he says.
It’s not just marketers themselves who are starting to reap the benefits from blogging. ‘Bloggerism’ is a new agency buzz word. “It’s a play on the word voyerism,” explains Paul Cash, director of technology marketing agency Tidalwave. “It’s the ability for the agency planner to watch commentary posted on blogging sites and feed the information back to clients.”
This use of blogging offers a far more valid piece of insight into target audience trends than focus groups, he argues, which are too stage managed. It also beats more traditional forms of research because it is immediate. “There is a rapid response ability from this channel. The take on a new product can be assessed immediately. Blogging is also a good way to test new ideas, to put the feelers out to your target audience before fully committing to the product,” says Cash.
Looking ahead
Agencies say more and more of their clients are coming to them asking about how they can use blogging as part of their marketing strategy. As a medium it’s not a quick fix tool – it takes time to build a reputable blog – but as Hood comments, it is emerging as a solid tool for the B2B sector because of the long sales cycle often involved. Client adoption is still in the early phases, but general consensus suggests that within the next 12 months there will be a sharp incline in the number of companies deciding to blog.
Already, the next phase in blogging is on the horizon. Twitter is a mini version of blogging which allows the blogger to write simple one-liners about what they are doing. It could emerge as an easy hit for companies that want to dip their toe into the blogging pool before fully committing.
King has a final piece of advice. “Accept that once you blog the content is there forever. Even if you take it down, there are ways the Internet will archive it. The Internet has a longer memory than the taxman.”
