Posts Tagged ‘blogs’

Growth in blog readership has been widely reported over the years (the latest suggests that blog readership has grown by 300% since 2004), but a recent survey also shows how influential blogs can be when consumers are looking to make buying decisions.

The BuzzLogic sponsored study - Harnessing the Power of Blogs - found that what blog readers consumed on-line strongly influenced purchasing decisions, and played a key role in taking them to the point of actual purchase. The survey looked at over 2,000 consumers in the US, and highlighted some interesting trends:

Blogs influence purchases. One half (50%) of blog readers say they find blogs useful for purchase information.

Blogs influence it’s readership in various stages of the buying process. A blogs role as a buying guide breaks down with readers as:

• Decide on a product or service: 21%
• Refine choices: 19%
• Get support and answers: 19%
• Discover products and services: 17%
• Assure: 14%
• Inspire a purchase: 13%
• Execute a purchase: 7%

Ads on blogs can spur various activities:

• 40% of blog readers have taken action as a result of viewing an ad on a blog; 50% of frequent blog readers say so.
• Top activities include the following: read product reviews online (17%); sought out more info on a product or service (16%); visited a manufacturer or retailer website (16%).

The ability to use the Internet as a research tool to aide your buying decisions is no big surprise - how many times have you been influenced by readers reviews on Amazon.co.uk? I bet at some point, you were either assured or turned-off of purchasing an item based on what you read. I know I have. We tend to seek out the opinions of others - to learn of their experiences.

The fact that blogs have been credited with the capability to influence purchases probably reflects how blogs make sharing product reviews and buying experiences so easy. The participation aspect of blogs also means others can add to the conversation about their particular experiences, offering a balanced view and increasing the depth of information available from a single site.

You can read BuzzLogic’s summary of the report over on their blog.

The Times Online last month published an interesting article about blogging amongst legal firms in the UK: Legal blogs: isn’t it time British lawyers staked their claim in the blogosphere? (read the full article here). The article cites several established lawyers who have been blogging and have seen success from blogging, including…

Peter Wainman of the Naked Law blog:

“We’ve had a huge amount of PR since starting the blog, both from online and traditional print media,” he says. “The blog is also a great way of engaging with the public, of generating discussion about interesting legal developments.”

and Alex Newson, an IT lawyer:

“Blogging has massive potential for businesses in general in the UK, including law firms. The publicity we have had since we started Impact nearly two years ago has been massive. We have been on the radio, been invited to speak at conferences, given quotes to national newspapers and have submitted papers. Technology only moves forward, not backwards, and the challenge now is to harness the blogosphere for law firms’ benefit.”

The benefits for law firms engaging with their customers are the same for businesses in other industries, but perhaps due to their specialization, law firms may be the ideal candidate to demonstrate their expertise, develop a voice (and even a personality), and begin establishing and strengthening customer relations.

If you don’t really feel like searching over 112 million blogs to find out what your customers / competitors / industry leaders are talking about, why not let Technorati do it for you?

Technorati is a blog search engine, tracking over 112 million blogs to bring you all the hot stuff from the blogosphere. As well as looking at blog posts, Technorati also makes use of ‘tags’ to allow authors to categorise their own content, and tracks the relationships between blogs and authors (who’s linking to each other, leaving comments or responses) - this all adds up to a comprehensive, real-time look at whats happening in the world of blogs.

Technorati easily allows you or your business to track what bloggers are saying about topics that are important to you. It’s a great starting point for tuning into the conversation.

We have incorporated Technorati tags at the bottom of each of our blog posts to allow us to tell Technorati a little about the subject of the post, as well as helping to categorise where this blog post should be found. You can view our Technorati profile at http://technorati.com/blogs/www.bpodr.co.uk%2Fblog.

Graham has also placed a not-so-subtle technorati button to the right hand-side of this blog, so you can mark us a Technorati favourite. (he’s too good to you!)

In the (very-near) future, we’ll show you practical ways of using Technorati to tune in and stay tuned to the conversation that matters most to your business.

EBay have moved to offer a greater transparency to their business operations; an interview with eBay’s new full-time blogger on CNN money suggests that eBay are truly embracing open communication channels with their customers: 

New eBay recruit and social media veteran Richard Brewer-Hay will launch a blog next month that aims to give eBay’s users a direct, unfiltered communications link with the company. Can he repair the company’s battered relations with its users?

“…My words go straight up onto the blog, unedited.

It’s got to be transparent. There’s got to be an authenticity to it, an honesty to it, otherwise there’s no point in doing it in the first place. I’m going to open up my e-mail to questions from folks. People can comment, too, and comments are going to be open. You’re going to get the good, the bad, and the ugly.” read more…

We like Richard’s blogging ‘ethos‘. EBay already have various channels available for communicating with their customers, but this initiative seems to be different; existing blogs are written by staff members with a history at eBay, Richard has joined eBay solely for this role and appears to be enthused by the prospect of talking about a huge range of eBay’s business.

We’ll be following eBays’ latest conversation-starter with interest, as well as keeping an eye open for other businesses employing full-time bloggers to help them converse with their customers. 

Dell continues to invest in it’s direct2dell blogging group, with an announcement that it has launched ‘In the Clouds‘, a blog that discusses the future of cloud computing.

Perhaps the biggest insight into how dell have adopted blogging comes from within the announcement (titled: more conversations…):

“From the beginning, the purpose of Direct2Dell has been to educate and to support our customers on a wide variety of topics that they care about. This blog has grown since those early days. And that growth has encouraged more Dell folks to want to have conversations with our customers.”

Dell’s strategy is also now including other web 2.0 channels - youtube, flickr and twitter to extend their conversation, and reach their customers in new ways.

Wal-Mart have handed over the keys for a shiny new blog to a selection of employees from their product buying department. The result is checkoutblog.com.

Wal-Mart appears to have learned after a previous attempt to enter the blogosphere was met with a negative reaction (Wal-Mart vs. the blogosphere). This time around, Wal-Mart are using real employees (who are real product buyers), asking for real feedback about products they are considering stocking or announcements they would like to make.

A good example of how a large company can develop a personable face for the interactions they want to have with their customers.

So it was written 5 years ago, which is the equivalent to about 57.3 human years on the Internet, but Robert Scoble was clearly on to something when he wrote the corporate blog manifesto. Read it, print it out, pin it above your computer and trust in its wisdom.

It’s what we (passionately) believe should be at the heart of your blogging and marketing strategy. Read it here.

Last week I outlined what a blog is, and began to look at why a business should invest time in developing, writing and promoting their own blog. Here I want to look at 6 key reasons why your company needs to blog:

1. Gathering Feedback - A blog can serve as an essential communication channel with your customers. Customers feedback, critiques, praises and complaints can prove invaluable. How much would you be prepared to spend on customer opinion polls, surveys and focus groups? A blog is a cost-effective way to listen to your customer feedback.

2. Clearer Communication - How would your business deliver relevant, up-to-date messages regarding events in your business or market to a broad audience, instantly? A blog helps you attract new customers and offer a personal touch to your communications with existing customers.

3. Google loves a blogger! - A blog can form a cost-effective, measurable solution to gaining higher rankings in the major search engines. Google loves relevant, updated, ever-changing content - the essence of a good blog, plus, if you’re talking about your market and business, your blog is naturally keyword heavy. (your talking about your products/services/industry after all, right?)

4. Blog for your staff - You value your customers feedback, thoughts and complaints, but how about your most valuable asset: your employees? Offering a channel for airing staff views and offering a virtual ‘water-cooler’ for your staff to discuss ideas, what’s working and what’s not, can provide direct feedback and it can help keep staff motivated and feeling valued.

5. Stay ahead of the competition - A blog allows you to demonstrate your industry expertise. Striking up conversations with potential and existing customers may well set you apart from your dull corporate competitor. If your competitors aren’t blogging, who are your customers listening to?

6. Extend your brand - Don’t just give your company a voice, how about a personality? A blog gives you the opportunity to talk to your customers in whatever accent you choose. The ethos of your company can be projected in the way you communicate, and what you choose to communicate about. A blog gives you the chance to further build on your brand.

Bonus 7. It’s the way you tell ‘em - Say what you want to say, when you want to say it - a blog allows unedited views, announcements or statements without being at the mercy of press editors. Press publications rarely tell it as you see it, so why aren’t you?

So, I believe these are among the most compelling reasons that your business has to join the on-line conversation, but the road to blogging bliss is crawling with considerations: who will write your blog? What will it be about? How often should you blog? Will it be hosted by yourself? Do we moderate comments? And more…

Of course, [warning: blatant service offering ahead] bpodr would be happy to help you implement your new blogging strategy, or just talk you through your options.