BusinessWeek’s Blogspotting regularly features stories of how companies are using blogs to their advantage. In our consulting with clients, there is a massive increase in interest in using blogs. At one level, there should be a business case for this, and its great to get examples of companies using blogs successfully.
For example, Ice.com, the online jewelry merchant, now has three blogs (here, here, and here) that are driving an amazing amount of traffic and sales to its main site. “We get thousands of leads a week from our blogs,” CEO Shmuel Gniwisch told BusinessWeek. The blogs are clearly marketing tools (rather than “real” blogs), but they’re working for the company with an average $200 spend per customer.
But even if corprate blogs are not so obviously linked to a sales drive, they can still be useful. And we need to be careful of overly focusing on a quick, easy, obvious “return to bottom line” business case for them.
Does your phone have a business case? How about your toilets? Or your carpark? What’s the business model for your Executive canteen? Do you refuse to buy furniture unless you can find a way to make money out of it? Blogs’ key value may be indirect, but that doesn’t mean they’re worthless. They can be valuable for all sorts of “soft” reasons, as well as “hard” ones. And, of course, “the soft issues are the hard issues” these days. Blogs are here to stay – don’t write them off before you try them.
More reasons to blog
Maidenmole and I recently took the plunge and set up a Blogger account for our company, Earth on the Move (http://www.earthonthemove.blogspot.com). I’ve mentioned in other posts that we’re not exactly situated in the most progressive industry around – earthmoving equipment spare parts – but hey, we thought we’d give it a bash.
We have been blown away by the success. If a company like ours, an SME with approx. 50 employees spanning all cultural backgrounds, ages, and degrees of techno-phobicness, can participate in constructive debate via a blog, then anyone can.