Next time your boss asks you why the organization should have a blog, tell him this story. Mack Collier writes about the efforts of baby equipment-maker Graco and its successful blog:
On the flipside, if you launch a blog and all you do is tell customers to ‘buy your stuff’, then your efforts not only won’t work, but you will do harm to your company’s image. At SBMU, I referenced Graco’s blogging strategy. Instead of using its blog as a direct-promotional tool, Graco positioned its blog as a vehicle to reach parents, and to discuss parenthood with them. Very little promotion of the company is involved, instead, it’s a blog written by parents, for parents. As a result, mentions online of Graco have almost doubled since Graco launched its blogging strategy, and positive mentioned have increased from 68% to a staggering 83%. That’s the power of a well-positioned blog.
Mack points out that for those numbers to be true, almost all of the post-blog mentions of Graco would have to have been positive. That’s an amazing impact on the conversation happening among customers online.
The key, of course, is to use your website as an extension of your organization — not just an add-on brochure about your organization. People should be able to learn from you and interact with you online. That takes work, and it means you should have someone dedicated to participating in that relationship. But if you take the time to do it, the rewards are huge.
If you liked this post, subscribe to this blog! You can get the RSS feed here, or just enter your email address in the box on the left column, and I’ll deliver updates to you — no more than once a day. And I promise not to spam you, or make it difficult for you to unsubscribe.
