Blog for business

Blogs have become a new ecommerce buzz. Marketers are blogging for organisations, products, ideas and or for other goals and achieving. A business blog is the one published by or with the support of an organisation to reach that organisation’s goals. In external communication the potential benefits include strengthened relationships with important targeted segments and positioning of the publishing organisation as industry experts. Blogs are also referred to as tools for collaboration, engagement and knowledge management.
Once an organisation has a blog, it offers immediate and high impact interaction with its target audience. As more people have online access, they will want more than the standard online newsletter or typical PR response. Long gone are the days when companies simply fed information to their customers. Now everyone asks for a dialogue – a meaningful exchange of information. Consumers also want to know that organisations are listening to them and paying heeds to what is being suggested.
From a business point of view there are several potential reasons to blog particularly in less connected country like Pakistan. Blogs are no different from channels like video, print, audio and other forms of presentations. This word of mouth (or call it word of mouse) marketing delivers results including stronger relations with important targeted segments.
Who should blog for the businesses? Ideally, front line people who know the business in and out should blog about it. Marketing professionals can also use this powerful tool. Organisation can hire professional writers to blog for them under company’s name or blog under their own. Depending upon the feedback and information provided by audience, internal bloggers can develop the ability to write in their own voice and create content for business blog. On the other hand, external bloggers can view business with an objective eye and offer fresh marketing ideas and strategies. External bloggers can study company’s marketing materials, reports, other collateral information, and meet key people in organisation to learn about what organisation does and how best to market the product through blogging.
Earlier, online marketing and websites never picked up in Pakistan because of obvious “digital divide that exists due to individual disparities in levels of income, education standards, psychological reasons, age, gender, rural urban divide, and quality of life or collective deprivations like lack of physical infrastructure.” Things have changed for the better. Now the stage is set for Pakistan corporate sector to look at blogging as an opportunity to reach out and take advantages. Best thing is that local businesses have noticed the growing readership and influence of these Internet postings and the buzz corporate blogging can create particularly as a process of Search Engine Marketing or targeting online segment of consumers.
Let me add that businesses cannot afford to ignore blogs because blogs are simply the most explosive outbreak in the information era since the Internet itself. Elsewhere, blogs are already shaking up just about every business. Blogs are a phenomenon that no futuristic business can postpone any further. Given the changes barreling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective rather a prerequisite. Like anywhere else, blogs can be a welcome mat for local businesses to reach out across the world. Pakistan bloggers are exceptionally good. They have expertise for corporate writing. Their language and blogging skills and networking capabilities can be compared with any bloggers’ community in the world. Internet coverage and users’ base is constantly growing. Even trend to shop online is taking off. Given chance, blogging can help any business directly as well as indirectly. And the whole world is your market as they say.
My recommendation is that every business, large or small, must start thinking out of the four ‘p’ marketing paradigm and have a blog.

The writer is Deputy Controller
of Examinations at Lahore
School of Economics. He blogs at http://logicisvariable.blogspot.com/ and can be reached at [email protected]