Should I Be Using a Blog for Marketing Purposes?

The efficacy of blogging as a marketing vehicle is unproven. Blogs are relatively new and entrepreneurs and corporations alike are just now starting to experiment with using them.

Depending on your business, starting a blog could be a low-cost method of boosting your profile with potential

customers and the media and even helping your Web site's ranking in "organic" search results. It could also be a time-consuming effort that yields relatively little benefit to your bottom line. It all depends on the commitment you're willing to make to your blog and its content.

Although this may now be unnecessary, let me first point out what a blog is for those who still may be a bit uncertain. (If you're reading this, you probably already know.)

A "blog" (formerly "Web log") is a publishing tool -- there are many on the market -- that is simple to set up and update. You can usually have one up and running in minutes, literally. They are typically hosted and entirely Web-based. Regardless of the provider, they also tend to resemble one another. Here are several of the leading vendors:

• Google's Blogger
• SixApart, who owns three blog products: Moveable Type, TypePad, and LiveJournal)
• WordPress

There are many more hosted blogging applications and all the major portals have blogging tools, including AOL, Yahoo, MSN, and Lycos. All of those are free, as is Blogger.

Blogs that are merely transparent marketing vehicles and carry only ad copy or promotional messages are probably destined to fail. They will likely be ignored because they're not perceived to have any real content or value.

There's too much noise on the Internet for people to waste time reading your blog if they're not getting any helpful or interesting information. However, a blog that doesn't in some way promote your products or service is, by definition, not a marketing vehicle. Finding the right balance between promotional copy and informational content is where the art of marketing comes in.

You should really see your blog as a way to make people aware of your products and services rather than as a source of direct sales. Generally, blogging is probably better suited for service providers (where reputation and other intangibles apply) than for product sellers (where price or location are typically bigger factors).

But let's make all this much more concrete.

If you're a local realtor and you put up a blog that contains only your listings, you're not going to get as much response in the end as if you provide tips or informational pieces, in addition to your listings, that somehow help buyers or sellers.

For example, content and informational articles such as "Ten things to do before selling your home" or "How to minimize closing costs" or "Should I get an ARM or a 30-year fixed loan" are going to be valuable content and ultimately help build "your brand." If you don't have time to generate original posts -- although blogs can be informal and posts relatively short -- you can write introductions or summaries of publicly available articles related to your business or industry and post links to third-party sites on your blog.

Once you've got a blog, you'll need to let people know it exists or otherwise enable your blog to be found. The "blogosphere" is something of a Tower of Babel, and rising above the din can be a challenge. In many cases, search engines will index your blog. But it probably won't rank highly in search results unless it's about a very obscure subject.

In other words, promoting your blog is analogous to the challenge of promoting your Web site. And all the techniques that apply to promoting your site apply to your blog.

If you're feeling exhausted at this point, you probably won't have the patience or energy to maintain a blog (posting frequency can vary, but should be regular). You may also see a blog and your site as redundant.

But if you give it time, you could find a blog helps establish your credibility or expert status in your field, which will ultimately help deliver clients or customers. Of course, you don't have to decide all this in the abstract. You can try it for a month or two and see if you like it or if the life of a blogger just isn't for you.