Blogging, what is it good for?

Blogs have come a long way since 1994, when Justin Hall created what is credited as the first blog ever. Once used as sort of an online diary, today they can be used in any industry, to accomplish a variety of marketing and communication goals. They can be used to differentiate a company from the competition, to create a community around your brand and to manage your reputation. And of course, like the Dilbert comic demonstrates, to establish yourself as an industry expert.

According to blog statistics, the Huffington Post is currently the most visited blog, and receives an estimated 28,000,000 Unique Visitors every month. According to Forbes, “the site is a mix of news, politics, opinions and entertainment, and is fed by an army of 6,000 free bloggers and celebrity contributors”. To be honest, with all this content, I didn’t even think of the Huffpo as a blog, more an in-depth news website, which I talked about in this post about my RSS feeds. But that just goes to show what blogs today are capable of.

Blog can also be very valuable assets, as shown when Huffpo was sold to AOL for $315 million in February 2011. This, despite the fact that Huffpo simply aggregates content from a variety of sources to build its own traffic, and doesn’t pay for many of its writers bloggers. In fact, this led to Stephen Colbert to creating his own website, called the Colbuffington Re-post, which he described as “everything you love about the Huffington Post, because it’s the Huffington Post with a new border around it that says the Colbuffington Re-post”. He offered it for sale for $316 million, ($1 million more than AOL paid for Huffpo) and said that if he finds a buyer, he will give them the same cut he’s getting for them to publish his content - in other words, nothing. A humorous way at poking fun at the fact that much of the content on the internet is not really “free”.

So what is the Huffington Post doing right? What could other industry blogs learn from them?

Based on my experience, if companies want to leverage the power of blogging, they need to:

1. Make it relevant:

Many blogs, as lovely as they are, write about obscure topics. Although I think it’s great that people want to write about what they are interested in, (eg. their injured dog’s recovery after hip surgery) if you want a blog for a company, you better make sure it has relevant content, or you just won’t be able to accomplish your objectives. Whatever they might be. That doesn’t mean you have to take the same position as everyone else, because that would be boring too, but just make sure whatever your talking about is worth your readers time, and can be tied back to your industry, brand or company. Some way or another.

2. Find your voice, personality, style

Many industry blogs can be dry, and boring. I would post an example, but I don’t read any! They are hard to find in search engines, and don’t have links to from any other sites. Its like the writers are bored themselves, and they don’t last for long. The content that does gets shared and promoted is interesting, and this often means it’s personal. It has style, and isn’t written by Tina the Tech Writer, for her boss (going back to the Dilbert example) because that just wouldn’t be authentic. I think one of the reasons Huffpo is so popular is that it has so many opinion pieces, and its bloggers take a position, on one side or another. You may not agree with what they say, but the more people talking about it, the more popular the site becomes.

3. Promote, promote, promote!

Sure it only took Huffpo 6 years to turn their $4 million investment into a $315 million brand, but it didn’t happen over night. It takes time, and energy, and more time. And since they have an “army of 6,000 free bloggers and celebrity contributors” their content is constantly updated and according to my Google Reader, they post 260 new articles a day. So maybe you, or you’re company doesn’t have as many resources behind it, but there are other ways to promote your content. Social networking is one great way, (it’s pretty much the only resource I have) and by following the SMO rules like increasing your linkability, making tagging and bookmarking easy and encouraging the mashup you will make sure your content travels. All for free!

So I’m no expert, but if you really want to leverage blogging for all its worth, think about these tips before you just write about the next thing on your mind. That’s what Twitter’s for. :)