We meet with a lot of companies who want to increase their websites profile online, and we often advocate blogging in order to do just that. There’s no doubt that blogging increases your websites traffic, but there’s more to it than just that.

Good blogging takes considerable time and effort but can have a positive effect on your business beyond attracting traffic to your website.

Advertising and PR are two areas most companies spend large amounts of money on, but blogging is often overlooked as the benefits aren’t always clear to them. Recently I started thinking about the relationship between blogging, advertising and PR.

To begin with, I think everyone will agree we are over saturated with advertising. And most will agree that as people, we trust businesses less and less - that is, we no longer take at face value what companies tell us. In general, the effectiveness of traditional advertising is declining and new ways of engaging consumers is necessary.

Consider for a moment the function of traditional advertising, for example, I recognise instantly the McDonalds brand - I recognise it because they spend huge amounts of money on their television ads etc, but it doesn’t make me eat there.

Or consider this snippet from an interview with Al Ries :

Take the Energizer Bunny, one of the most admired advertising campaigns of all time. Is Energizer the leading appliance battery brand? Of course not. The leading appliance battery brand is Duracell, by a big margin.

So advertising, even when noticed and ‘effective’, does not necessarily convert to sales.

Al Ries has this to say on the role of advertising:

Advertising is self-serving. What you say about yourself has little or no credibility in the mind [...] PR has credibility in the mind. It’s the third-party effect. [...] PR first to establish the credibility of the brand, advertising second to reaffirm and reinforce the brand’s credibility.

PR is about managing the public perception of your company, and your brand is that perception - so the ‘third party effect’ involves what people think and say about your company.

So, my point is this:

• Traditional advertising just doesn’t have the impact that it used to have.
• Advertising is a company’s statement about itself - we don’t trust these statements at face value.
• Successful advertising does not equal sales.

However:

• Advertising can reaffirm and reinforce a brand’s credibility.
• PR can help build a credible brand.
• Blogging can be a very powerful PR tool.

A blog is an incredibly powerful PR tool in the right hands. While good blogging does involve considerable investment, it is not, comparatively speaking, expensive or difficult to set up a blog - and you have an immediate communication tool with a potential global audience.

Advertising which reinforces an already existing perception of your company is more likely to succeed, and your blog can be a tool you use to build a perception of your company that goes beyond the usual press releases or advertisements.

There are two important factors about blogging that are relevant to this argument:

1. Humanising your company
2. Conversing with your market

Blogging in a writing style which allows people to identify with you as a person creates a human face for your company and we trust individuals more than we trust ‘businesses’.

Take the example of Robert Scoble, who has been credited widely with ‘humanising’ Microsoft, a company who had a very poor image as a ‘faceless corporation’. The Economist said that:

‘Mr Scoble is at his best when he opines ruthlessly on Microsoft’s technology. When Google or Apple or anybody else makes a better product, he blogs it. “I’ve been pretty harsh on Microsoft over the years,” he says. This gives him credibility, and thus power. If somebody somewhere takes a swipe at Microsoft that is unfair, Mr Scoble can cry foul and actually have his readers concede the point.’

The Economist also said he ‘made Microsoft, with its history of monopolistic bullying, appear marginally but noticeably less evil to the outside world’.

Of course, you will never trust someone within the company as much as an independent source, but when it comes to trust, every little helps.

By blogging honestly, and building trust, you can encourage discussions about your products or services on your own blog. As Seth Godin points out, conversations about your market happen regardless of whether your involved - is it not better to be actively engaging in conversation about your market? Is it not better to be defending your product against unjust attacks and to be able to address legitimate concerns consumers have about your product - just as Robert Scoble did for Microsoft?

By blogging, you can contribute personally to the building of a credible brand and if you encourage comments and debate on your blog you can evidence the ‘third party effect’ on your own site, where positive comments about your company or products come from visitors to your site.

If you’re interested in exploring these possibilities more, contact us and we’ll help you examine how you might best implement a blog.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 15th, 2007 at 12:06 pm and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.