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Give Blogging a Chance
Yesterday a colleague forwarded a post from The Funnelholic, a blog about B2b lead generation, inside sales, CRM, and online media. The author Craig Rosenberg came across The Marketing Consortium, Unica’s now defunct blog where great minds in marketing used to converge.
Rosenberg pondered why the enterprise marketing management company decided to close the blog last September, despite having well-known marketing thought-leaders blog on the site regularly and, as a result, reported high site traffic. In fact Unica’s post on the site reads the blog had “more visitors than we ever anticipated and a steady stream of regular readers.”
I knew that Unica shut down its blog last year, but was surprised at the rationale. Among the reasons Unica gave for closing the blog were that it wasn’t a critical channel, the level of blog readership among marketing executives is questionable, and there was no hard and measurable ROI.
Yes, sometimes you can blog forever and it feels like no one is listening, but it takes meaningful conversations to start a lively discourse among your customers and colleagues. It seems as thought Unica maintained the conversations and site traffic, but the company felt blogging still wasn’t a wise use of its resources and time. Just because it’s difficult to associate hard ROI with blogging, doesn’t mean it’s not working.
I believe blogs are more rapidly becoming critical channels. For one, blogs feed search engine traffic. If you write a keyword-rich blog every day you’re bound to deliver more traffic to your site. Unica’s blog is still delivering traffic almost a year after its close.
Blogs also build customer relationships and brand awareness. They give customers a chance to interact directly with your brand, and, in turn, give your company insight into what customers want and think about your products and services. That is invaluable information that provides honest feedback not always gained from customer surveys.
Monitoring the blogosphere is no longer an option, it should be part of your overall marketing strategy and budget. Think of it as another channel to connect with customers and hear what they’re saying about you, as well as a way to get employees personally involved in marketing the brand--it's a win-win for everyone. It may seem like a lot of work at first, but give it some time to get ingrained into employees’ routines. Once it is, they will not feel it’s a chore to blog and will definitely see the value in it and know that their time is well spent.
You know, I know this and find it hard sometimes to write what I feel is a meaningful post. Blogging just to blog can seem like an unproductive use of time.
However, you bring up the correct point that search engines are looking.
I need to write more. First I am going to link to this blog.
Thanks,
Bill
Bloggers and marketers and editors, oh my! Thanks for all the great attention to our old blog. I hope we can stimulate the same interest again!
Just a quick comment on TMC: Unica put a lot of effort into creating a place marketers could use as a forum for idea exchange. The content was pretty good... (Is it self-serving to say that; it wasn't written by moi!) But no matter how scintillating the content or how well-known the company, marketers are busy people! And it takes two to create "dialog." (If a marketer speaks in a forest...?)
The fact that many Unicans (sorry!) still blog is an indication that we haven't 'thrown away' the channel. But my feeling is the same now as it was then: if you don't have the ability - for whatever reason - to do a good job of keeping a blog going, then it's best to lay it to rest.
Thanks Craig. I'm happy to hear Unica is thinking about reigniting the blog. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
Great post and thanks for the attribution!
Just one thing to add: Unica did come to the blog post to talk about their decision. Their response is in the comments. Interesting.
Check out the comments: http://tinyurl.com/66ku9f
I see companies trying to assign a monetary value to a blog or other online community. While that's a good idea, it shouldn't be the only idea. Blogs allows the free-form flow of ideas between companies and customers that can't be matched.
I heard that one of Unica's reasons for quitting the blog is because "there are thousands of marketing blogs out there." If you go by that logic, you could also argue that Unica shouldn't provide software because there are thousands of software companies out there. There are many benefits to a blog, if done right. It's about finding your niche.
At the same time, it's not for everyone. If your audience doesn't participate, if it's too resource-intensive or too expensive, then it's not worth it. But given the site traffic and search engine numbers alone, it sounds like a valuable channel Unica has thrown away.
I agree Tim. Many CEOs that I speak to approach blogging with trepidation, unclear about whether or not they should write personal accounts or if they should please corporate communications and write too corporate. Finding a balance between the two can often seem like walking on a tight rope.
A good example of a CEO blog is Johnathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems (http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/). He unleashes on a regular basis his ideas about technology, the industry, and gives updates on his company. He’s been quoted as saying “Having a blog is not going to be a matter of choice anymore than having email is today.”
I share your amazement in some ways. But the flip side is also true.
One of the things I do is Search Engine Optimisation.
I don't do it with stupid tricks. I do it with good, honest content alongside making sure that the website is actually able to be searched for! And the value of inbound links is immense.
But do you have any idea how hard it is to convince a company to start to blog? Even to have a blog as simple as Marketing By Permission.
Most marketing executives nod sagely because most don't have the ability to write a blog, most don;t realise what a blog is, what it can do and what it can't do. And so many have to get approval for every goshdarned thing they write, so it's no longer current by the time it hits the page.
CEOs can't see the value of a CEO's blog. And yet most folk would read one if really written by the CEO, and if it was honest.
A blog will probably not send a visitor who'll turn into a sales lead. But it will enhance and reinforce your brand.
They just do not see it. Or they write in 'press-release-ese'. Or they give up.