I gave some serious thought to this question over the past year, understanding clearly that blogging was a growing communication tool. After all, we create, write and manage blogs for our clients, so why wouldn’t I practice what we preach (to be fair, Jim Tome from my office has been an active blogger for a while now)? I wasn’t concerned about coming up with enough content. Those who know me understand that I’m not short on words. My fear was the time commitment necessary to make my blog a valuable resource for marketers who take the time to read it.
You see, I came across many blogs that got off to a fast start, but failed to keep the author’s own attention to the point that the most recent entry was months ago. Not only does that blogger look bad, but the company itself looks bad. That hit to my firm’s reputation is not something I was at all interested in feeling.
Obviously I’ve decided to blog. And I can assure you that I’ll keep up with it.
In addition to being enjoyable for anyone who likes to write, blogging lets our current clients know what we’re thinking about before we even present it to them. It helps them understand why we recommend what we recommend, and what leads us to change course in things like web stat software, TV spot doughnuts, print media, etc.
For potential clients, blogging helps them know who we are and what we know so that they might consider including us in a discussion about their marketing needs. Blogs build name recognition, and enhance our brand. It allows potential clients who are searching similar subjects on the net to “find” us (due to some complex tagging work on our part). But most important, blogs give potential clients an anonymous way to stay familiar with an agency that they might want to talk with in the future.
So read away ’til your hearts content. Comment where ever and whenever you think necessary. Dialog is good here. In fact, it’s really the point. If you’ve experienced something different or similar, post your comments. It won’t hurt. You won’t get a call from us. And it will be greatly appreciated.
What are your thoughts as to blogging on your own web site, versus blogging on public or other organizations web sites? I’m trying to figure out the best way to use my time/resources.
I’m so glad you decided to start blogging. It’ll be great to get your thoughts on marketing through such a dynamic medium.
Anthony,
The internet as a whole is rather amazing since you can move freely across sites from around the world and yet nobody really knows — or cares — where a site is hosted. They just know they got to it somehow. Plus, since individual companies are creating and managing multiple sites and landing pages that all have unique urls (think Sony, which has a dozen sites to deal with all the different types of interest people have in them), consumers are already aware that “sites are sites”. So the location of the blog site matters little. The blog doesn’t need to be “in” another organization’s site, but there should be a link from it to your blog. What’s important are the number of links to the page and getting it picked up by the search engines.
The links can come from your main site and/or various pages within the site or even from an intranet. You can also have others link to your site.
As for getting picked up by search engines, note the little icons at the bottom of each post. Those icons link to pages where you and everyone else can tell other sites that this page has valuable information about the topic it covers. In essence, readers will be telling Google and other Search Engines that this site holds “expert” information and that it should be listed when someone searches the terms/tags listed with the post.
If you write a blog, add these links to the post so that you and others can tell other sites that you exist and that you know what you’re talking about.
Then you can host it where ever you want, under whatever domain name you think is best.
In my case, the “blog” is under http://www.demicooper.com/blog but it’s actually a WordPress blog.
Hope that helps. Let me know if you want more detailed information.
Charles Falls