cre8d design

Just got Blog Marketing in the mail today from Amazon and I’ll be blogging some excerpts, summaries and thoughts on the book as I read through it. Jeremy Wright writes about blogging for business – something I’m passionate about – and introduces the book by asking the question: “will you use blogs to benefit your business, or will you ignore them and perhaps experience a negative consequence that takes you completely by surprise?” Or, as we said in a recent talk on blogging for business: “become part of the conversation”. Jeremy lists the benefits of blogging as follows:

• Blogging is a communication tool
• A marketing technique
• A listening device
• A way to interact with customers one-to-one on a global scale

A while ago, I made a list of some of the applications of business blogging:

• Customer Relations: Building relationships and community with customers
• Customer Service: Dialoging with customers, gaining feedback, providing support, knowledge base archive
• Market Research: Learning from your market – surveying, testing new ideas/products
• Marketing: Increasing consumer awareness of one’s business online. Brand/reputation building, advertising
• PR: Press releases, news, announcements, promotions, crisis management, providing insight into your company
• Networking: Communication and collaboration among distributed colleagues, partners, suppliers, customers and others. Discuss relevant news items
• Internal use: Reduce emails (or large attachments), common source to refer to. Can be password protected. Group projects
• Knowledge-base archive
• Thought leadership: Provide advice, information, insight, resources, tips – demonstrating expertise

Back back to the book, it looks a nice introduction for people who are new to the concept of blogging but are curious about possibly using it as part of their business. More on it as I read through the book.