Brands Reinventing Themselves with Blogs

[mandy]

t would be easy to look at your latest online display ad report and come to the conclusion that many people simply don’t want a deeper relationship with your company. However, the opposite is usually true. In the age of big box stores and marketing strategies that keep customers at a polite distance, people crave the type of business relationships of yesteryear, where they had special relationships with the companies from which they bought things. We crave "Mom and Pop-ness," but find few successful marketers that have the time or inclination to celebrate our enthusiasm for brands and products.

We want to hack the ivory tower, deliberately avoiding the mechanisms companies set up to keep us at arm’s length. We feel special when our enthusiasm, criticism and importance to a company’s business is acknowledged and celebrated. Some companies are realizing this, and they’re setting up scalable ways of speaking directly to the market through the internet.

Along with these new programs comes the realization that this direct dialogue is critical. Customers expect it, and prospects are looking for it, too, particularly when they’re in a business relationship they’re unhappy with...

full article: http://imediaconnection.com/content/12540.asp

[BellisimaJ.]

The best corporate blogs shed their corporate happy talk and speak to people in the same tone and manner as if reader and blogger were shooting the bull at a cocktail party. There’s a reason for that. People are exposed to plenty of marketing prose and hyperbole in your ads. They don’t need more.

If you go the opposite route, you risk boring your readers to sleep.       Blogs seem to be a great way to connect with people on a more personal level.

Just not too sure how to go about that when you are also trying to market your product.

Markets are conversations, and blogs are one of the things that allow us to connect directly with the market.
Sometimes companies lose sight of that. Blogging is a lot of fun and it’s invigorating to see people reacting to a just-published post. What you’re really doing is cultivating conversation by encouraging both reader and blogger to listen to one another and engage in meaningful dialogue.

Bloggers who don't respond to comments suck, IMO. Why take comments if you have no intention of engaging in a conversation or answering concerns/questions?


Excellent article, Mandy!!