The Four Uses of Blogs for Marketing and PR

In this weeks reading, there was one section that really stuck out to me. It began with the four different ways to use blogging to improve your marketing and public relations. The four ways that Scott identifies to use blogs are:

1. Easily monitor what millions of people are saying about you, the market you sell into, your organization, and the products that you sell.
2. To participate in those conversations by commenting on other people's blogs.
3. To work with bloggers who write about your industry, company, or products.
4. To begin to shape those conversations by creating and writing your own blog.

On page 64 of The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Scott he talks about how influencial a blog can be to the marketing and public relations of a company or organization.  It is not only important to use a blog, but it is important to get a sense of important bloggers, voices, and the etiquette of blogging, especially in the field of your organization or market share. A powerful relationship with bloggers who write about your industry can be very influential and can help you get a better reputation online. 

The main issue that corporate PR departments face and their main concerns come from how to actually write the blog. However, they understand that blogs are important because you can see from just one influential and popular blog, they can sometimes have more readers than daily newspapers.

According to this blog the blog provides many important benefits to a company's digital marketing position. It can help with brand building, search engine marketing, it is free marketing, it is accessible to the public, you can provide company promotions, and you can give direct customer support. An example of a way that a blog can help promote your company and product without you even asking happens in blogs such as Gizmodo. This is a technology blog that keeps consumers up to date with the best products and what they should spend their money on. This blog has become popular enough that many consumers go there to compare products before they purchase. 

Link to my blog