Why a Blog ?

So there's "yours truly" in front of a terrifically famous hotel during a recent sales conference. In fact, the hotel was actually the setting for a MasterCard commercial a few years back. You might remember ...

A young newlywed couple, on their honeymoon, in a convertible, a scenic wrong turn takes them through the parking lot of this very hotel. They look up and around in awe.
She says, "Can we afford to?"
His response, "Can we afford not to?"

Good commercial. It stuck. Beautiful hotel. You might remember. In terms of marketing, creating memorable media is good.

Anyway, enough about the memorable mastercard commercial, for now. Let's talk about the new ways of being memorable. WHY the Blog ? 3 basic reasons.

1) Research
2) Fun
3) Sales

Let's explore ...

1) RESEARCH

Quick question. How did you get here ?

Did you click on a link from a bio ? Was the link in a business card, attached to an email that was forwarded to you ? Could it have been a blogger.com search or a search engine search ? Maybe it was a link from someone else's blog or from an online article you were reading ? Possibly, the link showed up in your inbasket, as a paid advertisement, embedded in an industry related enewsletter that you subscribe to. Or was it more traditional, like through 'word-of-mouth' for example ?

The point ? How people like yourself end up here is interesting to us at C&A. Gaining an understanding of how the masses (one-by-one) navigate the web is an important part of what we do - professionally. Knowing the trends of popular navigation habits helps us serve our clients better.

Online Buzz marketing, for example. It's been around for a decade and remains one of today's most effective - not to mention FREE - ways of creating awareness and excitement about an idea - your company, your new service or product - again, FREE ! Buzz marketing is a concept that has been enabled and fueled by today's contemporary information and communication technologies and the tens of thousands *hudreds of thousands* of bloggers and even more blog readers. Are you having bloggers to 'guest posts' for you? It's responsible for great ideas spreading like viruses, at the speed of light, through social media including the old school 'blogosphere' for example. Just one cost effective approach to cross-channel reach that keeps on giving.

What's most interesting is that today's savviest business leaders leverage the blogosphere and other Buzz Marketing tactics to create a virtual hype machine that makes their ideas popular and puts them in the forefront of what's trending and that helps turn their companies from startup to $30 million hit - overnight. Want to know more, here is the Business2.0 article. Keen footwear is featured (and 3 others). A small team of seasoned footwear and marketing professionals start a company, take on the goliaths and win ! [Expired ? Send me an email, I'll forward you the article. A terrific read.]

As a result of our passion for promotion and sales innovation, it's our business to always be asking, learning, researching how people, just like you, navigate the Net. To that end, this blog serves as one form of research into the 'blogosphere' again, so that we can help our clients stay on top, and ahead of their competition.


2) FUN

Chronicling one's personal life (for some) is 'fun stuff'. Blogging, for tens of thousands of people across the world, is a contemporary 'public' form of chronicling - a life, an idea, a trip, you name it. It's like a living-breathing photo-journal and anyone can do it - again, FREE. For people like myself, it's a bit of an art form, a creative release, a way to keep friends and family up to date on personal developments, and a way to keep the collaborative communication juices flowing.

Similarly, for some, it's a fun way of posting and sharing professional opinions about new ideas, industry research and trends, relevant developments and even past accomplishments and memorable times spent with clients or work friends.

For me, it's both. Part of this blog represents some fun - both personal and professional.

So, there's both a personal and professional FUN side to a blogging effort. Finally, to answer the question "WHY a BLOG?", there's a direct sales functional component as well.


3) SALES

You can also think of this blog as an informal, interactive and searchable virtual 'shingle'. I'm a business person. One who has 'linked in' with a powerful network of executives, creatives, sales and business leaders and executives. I have personal access to technology specialists, sales copy writing specialists, VPs of all types Sales/Manufacturing/Marketing/Operations, C-Level Executives including CEOs of Fortune 500, NASDAQ-traded corporations. I can tap Solution Selling experts, Lead Generation entrepreneurs, and people from all kinds of different industries and verticals.

So, that means on behalf of C&A, I'm always selling - and that means creating awareness through smart advertising and promotion.

You get the idea. A blog can act as a 21st century way for prospects and paying customers, all over the world, to find you and learn more about what it is that you do. You're indexed and that makes you 'searchable' on the web. For more information, listen to IBM's leading edge thinker, John Patrick, discuss the relevance of 'Blogging' and 'podcasting' in this 21 minute 'podcast' conversation.

In our case, I use this blog as an informal destination for prospects and buyers so that they can learn that C&A is about marrying contemporary information and communication technologies with solution sales processes and marketing best practices to create high performance sales cultures that transform businesses and deliver repeatable reliable results. Using this blog, we are able to tell our prospects that we are a collective group of talented, international, new world collaborators, vigilant and on the constant look out for what works, what delivers results, what makes business sense.

A blog is a clean, searchable, unimposing, and subscribable way to share with the online public what you do. It's a form of the new social media available to any individual, any group, any company (did I say FREE ?!)


CONCLUSION

As a closing thought, here's an idea for you. If you have someone in your organization, a crafty story teller, a technology bigot, a captivating pundit, a good communicator and someone who has a passion for writing, you may want to encourage him/her to be your unofficial 'blogging' spokesperson. Invite him/her to start his/her own blog. Ask him/her to create a professional section. Then invite your best customers to read his/her weekly column. Blogging is a FREE (long-tail, gift that keeps giving) way to begin the BUZZ. Alternatively, consider contacting us. We'll be happy to help you to tap into the hype machine.


In closing, I hope you find value in what you uncover here. Please have a look around. You will find personal info, hobbies, family developments, travel and of course, on a professional level, postings on trends for high performance sales and marketing in a world of new media, new clients, and new consumers in a post television age. The aim is to inspire innovation.

Best of luck, enjoy the posts and if you have any questions on how you might leverage the internet or other sales and marketing innovations, drop us a line. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thank you in advance for visiting. Come back any time, and of course, I welcome your comments and feedback.


- chapper