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The Emergence of Blogs

A quick Internet search on a host of topics will likely result in at least one hit that is a blog. Available on issues ranging from business strategy and current events to televisions shows and knitting, blogs have taken a prominent place in media outlets. A blog (short for weblog) is an online journal that is instantly published to a website. Blogs often include thoughts, comments, philosophies and are updated frequently. Although websites are updated regularly, they are not revised as often as a blog. Often, websites are more impersonal in how they deliver content to an audience. Conversely, blogs are viewed more as conversations between parties and the author responds to feedback from readers. A website is necessary to support a blog. By learning the basics about a blog, members of the design and construction industry can become well positioned to combat any attacks on a blog or even use a blog to help market their firm or services.

Understanding Blogs
According to an article titled "Corporate Blogging Made Simple" by Janet Johnson on the American Marketing Association website, "blogs are becoming so pervasive that a recent survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project revealed that 27 percent of adults who go online in the United States read blogs. That same survey showed that 40,000 new blogs appear each day. If only 0.01 percent of those are relevant to your business, that means there are 40 new blogs popping up each day that could be covering your market trends, talking about you and your competitors, and/or engaging existing or potential customers."

Many savvy business owners are seizing upon this opportunity to learn from customers to help better position their company. Blogs provide real-time customer discussion, so you know what customers are thinking today. For example, if you recently poured a foundation for a homeowner, they can log onto their blog and talk about how positive the experience was or how professional your firm was. The inverse can also be turn - they can complain about the service or end-product that they received in a forum available to anyone who types in your firm's name in a search engine. Further, blogs can help you understand what is important to the end-user of a product or service.

It is important in today's 24-7 world that you see what is currently being said about your company by typing your firm's name into a search engine like Google or MSN. The introduction of blogs has made this even more critical. Blogs create a very reactive environment, so it is crucial that you respond and react quickly to blog postings. Bloggers are amplifiers - either positive or negative - so remaining on top of postings is critical.

How Can a Blog Help You?
You don't have to wait for a customer to begin blogging about you to participate. Creating your own blog can be an important marketing tool. Blogs can help you measure your performance and compare you to your competition. It is also an excellent forum for dispelling information about current projects. For example, creating a blog for school project can be a place to update the community about the project and highlight important project milestones. This effort can help increase community support and make them feel like they are a part of the project.

However, blogs should not be independent of your other marketing efforts. They should support your brand and marketing messages. Many marketing professionals advocate increasing your public relations activity in today's blogging world because many bloggers will look for articles to support their positions. They will pull information from articles into their blogs, so committing to a comprehensive public relations program should be the first step to handling blogs. Further, public relations professionals are essential when developing a blog because they can ensure that the proper messages are being dispersed. Once information appears on a blog, it becomes public knowledge and your public relations team can help position your company well.

Another important step is to create an internal blog before posting one for all to see. By keeping your initial blog internal, you can ensure you have proper information to share and will be able to commit to the frequent updates. This will help educate your entire team about what is proper information to share and help create guidelines for an external blog.

The Future
While blogs may often seem like a forum for computer junkies or only the savviest Internet users, that is no longer the case. Many marketing professionals argue that the blog phenomenon will be similar to the introduction of websites and most companies will have one, or at the very least, monitor them to help with marketing efforts. Committing to learning about this new marketing tool will lessen the learning curve when you are ready to embark on a blog campaign. Begin by monitoring blogs that target your industry.

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