Why do I or my company need a blog?

$400 million.

That’s how much marketers spent word wide on advertising in 2006 according to PiceWaterhouseCoopers. This spend was mostly went into advertising (TV by and large).

This kind of communication with customers is generally thought to be dependent of having allot of people to talk to. But also talking to these people repetitively. As Forrester Research’s Li and Bernoff says:

“It’s not talking really, it’s shouting.”

Another channel used to speak to customers is Public Relations (PR) of then in the form of press releases in different degrees of sophistication. The aim is to get ‘influencers’ - hopefully the press - to pick up on the message and run with it.

Li and Bernoff rightly claims that something is wrong here. They use the traditional marketing funnel metaphor to explain why.

Consumers are driven to the funnel opening through ‘awareness activities’ like advertising. In order to buy they then proceed through stages: Consideration (thinking about your product), Preference (Preferring it), Action (Yes, they have to do something), Loyalty.

Problem is that marketeers can’t influence what happens in the middle of the funnel easily by way of PR or ads.

Forrester’s Brian Haven in a 2007 report:

“Face it: Marketers no longer dictate the path that people take (though the funnel), nor do they lead the dialogue.”

The power of the people (The groundswell)

It’s here where the influence of what Forrester calls the groundswell - is the greatest.

Once people know about a product they turn to each other for more learning. Social media makes this a whole lot easier and dilutes the influencing power of traditional advertising.

What does this have to do with blogs? Well blogs are one of the key social technologies, along with forums, social networks, product ratings and even viral videos.

Besides the fact that blogs can enhance your web exposure in Search Engine rankings through its generation of Google juice (Pagerank), blogs can be an extremely authentic voice for your company in the online conversation.

But should you blog?

According to Forrester they get more questions about blogging from CEO’s than any other social media technology.

“No matter what your company does, whom it sells to, or what parts of the world you do business in, people are blogging about your product.”

Your competitors are probably blogging or thinking about it.

If your company produces blockbuster products like the Batman movie, or sexy underwear like Agent Provocateur, iconic cars like the Mini or you are a upcoming rock band, in short if your company produces products that we use to define ourselves with (Identity products).

If your company produces ‘Identity products’ then using social networks like Facebook or MySpace could more than just do the trick in boosting your brand exposure.

But if your brand is not quite as catchy and won’t easily have the public that excited, it is time for a different approach to speak to your customers in the funnel. You might be an architecture firm for instance.

Then it’s time to look take at blogging. This applies especially in the case business to business and companies with more complex product offering.

Blogs generate traffic, but says Bernoff and Li, the awareness is not the greatest benefit of blogs. Using Hewllet Packards experience with blogs as an example they say:

“The benefit is that HP can now respond to its customers in the middle of the funnel“.

Blogs also allow companies to respond to postings about their organisations in the blogosphere most effectively.

But blogging is not for everyone. Should you or your company blog? Blogging certainly is not for companies that are not prepared for a new way of doing business.