Blogging: The Low Cost, High Return Business Marketing Tool, Part 6: Cons for the Company without a Blog

In Part Five of this marketing series, I listed the pros for starting and maintaining an active blog to support a small business. The list of the cons includes reasons why not blogging could affect your bottom line.

By not blogging companies could lose potential customers, lose current customers, lose influence that could be wielded and eliminate building relationships to define a company. Businesses can benefit from being aware of other company blogs even if they are not blogging themselves.

LISTENING - Blogs help companies listen to what others are saying about them.

TRACKING - Blogs help to track where, why and how a company is (or is not) growing.


l 2 r: Thrillville Carousel fine art photo - Pfeiffer Photos, Dodgem fine art photo - Photobox

TRENDS - Blogs can indicate trends a company is starting or is a part of.

RESPONDING - Blogs let companies know what people are saying about them—the good and the bad--and help them decide how they should respond.

SOLUTIONS - Blogs provide a safe, often informal, place for companies to respond to customer feedback and to offer solutions and follow up for unhappy customers.

NETWORKING - Leaving comments on other blogs lets blog writers know other companies are listening to them and it builds more connections between companies.

l 2 r: Key Card custom design biz pkg - S Type Creative, Great Bowl O'Fire recycled steel, 37" - John T. Unger Studio

Community and Cataloging of Blogs

The collective community of all blogs is known as the Blogosphere. Discussions on blogs are often used by members of the media as a measurement of public opinion on many topics. Numerous online communities have been created to connect people to blogs and people whom blog to other bloggers, including BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog.

l 2 r: Gluten-Free Plain Donut Hole Mix - Glutenada, Happy Dog fine art photo - Ondago Arts

Blog search engines, such as Bloglines, BlogScope, and Technorati exist to help readers search the contents of blogs. Technorati, the most popular search engine for blogs, displays the most up-to-date statistics on searches and tags used to categorize blog postings.

Keywords are being replaced by other information to help navigate more efficiently through the large amounts of information on all the blogs on the Internet. Blogs are ranked for popularity based on the number of incoming links and web hits by people searching for blogs to read on the Web.

This post is part SIX of a marketing series. Please visit my archives to read parts 1-8.

The photos displayed in this post represent items sold by our ever vigilant, super creative, fellow small business owners, in their online Etsy stores. Please click on the links under the photos to visit the artist shops on Etsy!

Etsy is the pefect place to shop for gifts. Share joy and buy quality, handmade, edible and vintage goodies from local and international artists and sellers.

copyright pfeiffer photos 2008 - all rights reserved. do not use my writing or photographs without my permission. contact me HERE for info and permissions...thanks!