Ben McConnell, author of the blog, Church of the Customer, offers some advice to businesses that want to blog. According to McConnell, why should companies blog?
What will be an ideal response?
According to McConnell, blogs are easy to create and many blog services provide easy-to-prepare templates to help marketers get a blog started. He also believes a "blog is part of a long-term customer evangelism strategy." By customer evangelism he means that blogs are personal and as such they tend to humanize an organization and its members.
Blogs also act as instantaneous feedback devices. Many blogs allow readers to comment on blog posts or to link to the blog from their own blogs. This characteristic of blogs permits close to real-time feedback on ideas and issues that resonate with the blogger and the blogger's audience. Blogs can sometimes unmask concerns and problems before they mushroom.
Blogs compel their creators and commenters to share their knowledge more frequently. What appears on a blog is most of the time automatically indexed on various search engines, making it easier for consumers interested in a blog's topic to locate relevant blogs.
Blogs facilitate the propagation of word-of-mouth and draw the attention of other media and non-media connectors. Thought-provoking content is likely to be cited and spread more often.
Blogs allow bloggers and readers to engage in multiple conversations simultaneously - a feat that possibly no other medium has been able to accomplish until the advent of online technologies.
Blogs also help to position a firm or thought leader as a knowledgeable expert in a particular field or industry.
McConnell counsels marketers to be authentic. A blog should not be a disguised sales pitch, even though consumers are aware that they are involved in a dialogue about brands and products.
Finally, McConnell warns marketers to be open to criticism from blog participants. Comments and other feedback might be negative, so firms should not merely expect positive reactions. Firms can learn from a wide range of consumer opinion,
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