Marketers of technology products and services have good reason to explore social media marketing techniques. Now eMarketer reports that corporations are finding that blogs can be instrumental tools for building solid relationships and gaining meaningful influence with their customers.
Clearly, blogs are increasingly popular with both online consumers and people involved in business related procurement. According to an August 2008 study by BuzzLogic and JupiterResearch, there has been 300 percent growth rate in monthly blog readership over the past four years.
In fact, nearly one-half of the online population reported reading blogs.
The study also found that blogs have more impact on purchasing decisions than social networks. One-quarter of readers said they trust ads on a blog, as opposed to 19 percent who trust advertising on social networks.
In addition, 40 percent of blog readers -- and 50 percent of frequent blog readers -- have proactively taken an action after viewing an ad message on a blog.
Aside from technology-related purchases, for which 31 percent of readers said blogs are helpful, other categories for which respondents say blogs are influential included media and entertainment (15 percent); games, toys and sporting goods (14 percent); travel (12 percent); automotive (11 percent); and health (10 percent).
Apparently, marketers increasingly view blogs as a key part of their marketing plans. An October 2008 study by the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG) found that more than 66 percent of executives employ blogs in their marketing efforts.
However, based upon the way that most large companies utilize micro publishing tools, such as blogs, I believe that many marketers confuse blogging with the legacy process of press release production and distribution. Ironically, blog posts are often reviewed an edited to ensure that they mimic the corporate marketing speak rhetoric of communication from a bygone era.