Washington Post Discusses Weblogs as Business Building Tools
Lost in the run-up to the anniversary of September 11 was an article in The Washington Post discussing the idea of using weblogs to increase business revenue. Earlier that week, a meeting had taken place in Tysons Corner, VA, where best practices were discussed. According to the article:
One theory tossed around at the New Media Society event Tuesday night was that e-mail marketing is dead and business blogs are rising up as the replacement. While the medium may not be in its grave yet, powerful spam filters that block out corporate e-mails have certainly limited its effectiveness. But some proponents of blogging say the new business-development tool can succeed in ways e-mail never could.
It's much harder to run a successful email marketing campaign than most business people think. The pitch has to be very focused, and mailed to a well-defined group of people-- preferably who have already "opted in". Email marketing should also be coordinated with additional information on a website, since people who are interested in the message will probably want more information.
Putting all of this information into a weblog is often a better alternative. Only one tool is necessary to post your information. Summaries of the information you provide on your website can be distributed to other websites using syndication technologies like RSS. Your website can collect information about current and potential customers, and that information can be funneled to salespeople at your company for followup.
Once you start telling a compelling story on a website, an audience for it can easily develop. Over the past year, people interested in business weblogging and web services have come to visit CTDATA.com again and again. But, the key to increasing our business has been to keep the pointing out that the technologies we use can expand our customers' businesses.
So, by adding a weblog to your company's website, you can develop new clients and sell more products and services to your existing clients. By using existing web services interfaces to businesses like Amazon.com and Google, you can increase the revenues generated by your company's website.