“Essentially the internet has eliminated most physical impediments to doing business, being creative and having fun. If information is the most valuable asset in the world, the internet has made us rich…”
- Yahoo, i-generation, 2005.

There are a lot of sites out there: some serious, some humorous, some corporate, some unofficial, some useful, some useless… www.stuffonmycat.com for example.

The ease and scope of the internet has radically changed consumers’ expectations. We both enjoy and expect the immediacy of online, we’re used to more choice than ever before and in a digital age we need information to be up-to-date and easily accessible, whilst placing a greater focus on self-expression and creativity. This in turn has affected the way we do business, whether it’s communicating with consumers or our clients, suppliers or strategic partners. When blogging first started to really hit the headlines in 2005, it was described as a phenomenon and a trend that had reached its tipping point, with blog trackers Technorati stating that one new blog was created every second.

Consumers are now more comfortable with using the internet and IP technology, and with broadband use so widespread it’s essential for marketers to keep abreast of developing technologies, changing behaviours and current attitudes towards their brand and advertising in general. Blog monitoring can help you do this, as well as ‘keeping in touch’ with your consumer.

What is a blog?

Once a term used to describe an online journal or ‘weblog’, definitions of the blog can vary, often used as a blanket term to incorporate a range of online activities and behaviour. In general terms, a blog is an online space regularly updated presenting the opinions or activities of one or a group of individuals, displayed in chronological order.

The definitional boundaries between a blog and a ‘regular’ website are becoming increasingly blurred, and we have recently seen a significant rise in the development of corporate blogs, which will be discussed later.

Blog editors often use a form of technology called RSS. There is some debate as to what RSS stands for, but the popular choice is ‘Really Simple Syndication'. RSS allows you to identify the content you like and have it delivered directly to you, making tracking new posts easy. RSS has found particular favour amongst blogging fans, eager to keep up to date with their favourite blogs without having to go from site to site. RSS software tracks updates to sites that users have flagged and aggregates the new entries into an easy to read format.

Blogs are easy to update, and will often have a number of links to other sites which their authors feel may be of interest to their readership. These factors combined make them highly visible within natural search engine listings. New search engines such as Technorati (who now monitor over 57 million blogs) and Google Blog Search have emerged dedicated entirely to blogs, which will only increase in importance as the popularity of blogging continues to grow. Search engines like these are not only indexing blogs by looking at links but also who starts or leads the conversation in the blog – in other words ‘the authority’. Download the IAB Search Handbook for more details.

Prior to the expansion of the internet, word of mouth was probably the most trusted form of recommendation, yet until now had limited reach. Furthermore, it’s common sense that if someone has a negative experience with a brand, they’ll probably tell someone else. Think about your own experience, if you’ve been given a dodgy deal by a phone company or have an mp3 player that keeps breaking, human nature is such that you’d probably want to tell a lot of people, and with the internet you can. With online, peer to peer recommendations are more powerful than ever, and in a 2004 study, ‘Brand New World’, AOL and the Henley Centre found that:

• 67% of respondents consider personal recommendations as an important source ofinformation when researching/considering a product or service.
• 90% of people believed that personal recommendations are a trustworthy source of information.
• 42% of online consumers have changed their mind about a brand they were going to buy and switched to a different brand.
• 48% of people use the internet to research products/services because they canaccess consumer opinions/ratings

As Brand New World shows, consumers are information hungry and blogs can often fulfill this need, possibly as much as a company’s own website would, by providing insightful views and new perspectives.

If used sensitively, blogging can be harnessed by brands to generate business, canvass opinion and monitor consumer commentary, and also as an effective extension of an online advertising campaign.

We will now outline why blogging and consumer empowerment is so relevant for your organisation, how you can use it to your advantage and the do’s and don’ts to remember when planning to incorporate blogging within your corporate communications strategy. We’ll be discussing the use of blogs in two sections, monitoring the blogosphere and creating your own.

Monitoring the blogosphere

Blog monitoring is a completely new way to find out what people think of your brand, and to possibly identify new trends in time to capitalise on them speedily and effectively. The ‘blogosphere’ is an exceptionally large space – according to Technorati (November 2006) every day 100,000 blogs are created and 1.3 million posts are made, its founder David Silfry believes that: “It indicates that blogging continues to play a critical role in debates about the important issues of our time… The impact of these bloggers on our cultures is increasingly dramatic.”

Your own research, using the engines referred to above, is necessary to gauge what online editors are saying about you; however it is also beneficial to have access to the most up-todate reports on any internet commentary that could affect your brand. There are a number of agencies and dedicated organisations that now offer this service, who can also advise on your response and approach to blogs related to your company. In summary, they can:

• Sift information and deliver it to you in a comprehensive and digestible format
• Help you analyse your online presence and evaluate responses to any critical online commentary
• Provide you with this information at speed, thus giving you time to respond, if appropriate, without draining your research and communications budget.
• Ensure you maintain a consistent and effective dialogue with your consumers, allowing you to exploit an entirely new marketing channel, and remain one step ahead of your competitors.

Blog monitoring and response in action

The film Snakes on a Plane became more than a summer movie blockbuster in 2006. The internet activity that surrounded the film embodied online’s centre stage role. Internet users in their discussions about the film literally generated content for the film, with re-shoots, certifications and dialogue pandering to the groundswell of fan opinion about what they expect to see in a movie called Snakes on a Plane.

Ben Butler, content manager for the IAB, described the incredible story surrounding the film, ‘Snakes on a Plane’ in a recent IAB news article.

Creating your own blog

Here’s the fun part. If you’re thinking about launching a blog of your own, before you go any further, simply ask yourself why. That may seem like odd advice, however some advertisers have jumped feet-first into the blogoshere in order to ‘move with the times’ without analyzing its potential impact on their brand. Often creating a blog can be a perfect accompaniment to an online campaign, or indeed form the basis for a campaign itself, however it’s important to remember the following:

Is the content of the blog suitable to be updated regularly? If you’re promoting an event for example, a blog is a great way to keep attendees in the loop. Blogs can form the basis for a competition or long-running promotion, for example the Playstation ‘Freedom’ campaign and clothing company 55SDL launched a ‘junior lucky bastard’ competition, stating that:

“55DSL is looking for two young and gifted individuals to join our new Kick Ass Department. This isn’t a joke, we really do have a Kick Ass Department and we really are looking for someone to fill our Junior Lucky Bastard position. The job is simple. You get paid to go around the world looking for cool stuff, filming it, blogging it, living it for 55 Days. When your 55 Days are up, you will be spat back into the real world a little bit confused but none the less richer for all your experiences.”

If people associate your brand with a character, a blog is an effective way of building your brand through letting consumers interact with the fictional figure – last year for example Procter & Gamble launched a character blog, entitled Where the Sparkles Girls Get Real, a blog promoting Secret Sparkle Body Spray. Owens Corning, a US organisation dedicated to energy conservation and for whom the Pink Panther is the official mascot, launched a Pink Panther blog which is still running today at http://saveenergy.owenscorningblog.com. Be careful though, this type of blog isn’t always the most popular with blog purists.

Whatever form your blog takes, ensure the navigation is simple and intuitive, invite feedback, provide engaging and fresh content (with less of an overt advertising message) and wherever possible encourage creativity.

You may also want to consider advertising on a blog (film site Aint it cool news carries ads heavily targeted to it’s film fan readership) or sponsoring a blog that’s highly relevant to you target audience. In this way you are able to reach the consumer yet on their own terms, complimenting the user experience rather than trying to control or affect it. You could also collaborate with a blogging audience, as Endemol have recently done, teaming up with photo blogging site Fotothing to create a 2006 review of the year show.