Have you ever learned a new word and then seen that word used everywhere? Suddenly you read your new word in articles, see it on billboards and used ad nauseum by the color man during football games?
Now, was the word always there and you didn’t notice it, or has it just magically sprung into use while you slept? Or a combination of both?
I ask this because last night when I watching TV they said, and I quote:
Blog blog. Blog. Bloggety-blog blog. Bloggety-bloggety-bloggety blog. Blog. Blog, blog, blog, blog and blog. Blog. Blog…blog. Blog or blog? Blog. Blog, blog, blog.
BLOG!
And now, more blog.
O.K., maybe it wasn’t that bad. In fact, it was only one show on a cable station called Fuse. (Think MTV but with music videos.) The VJ was promoting the show’s blog.
And admittedly, I had spent the past hour reading posts on a great blog about business blogs by Rick E. Bruner called Business Blog Consulting.
It was at that moment that I got a sickening feeling in my stomach. That I had been turned into a promoter of yet another non-event in the history of the Web. That blogs were no more important and would prove no more durable than "push technology" from the late nineties.
However, then I got to thinking about why I first started getting interested in blogs, and why I think they’re important.
I’m a Web developer by trade. (Hmmm…that makes me sound like I’m part of some guild, and I just missed making the blacksmith team.) At flyte, our goal is to build effective Web sites for clients and then help drive traffic to those sites. That includes search engine optimization, email marketing and other Internet-based marketing.
From what I initially read, and what I’ve found to be true since then, blogs can really help with marketing a business site. I’ve seen my blog traffic steadily rise and my ranking on important key phrases at Google come up on the first page…sometimes even hit number 1. I’ll admit, I haven’t spent too much time trying to drive this traffic to our company Web site, or convert it into business, but our pipeline is full so it hasn’t been my first priority.
In short, blogs probably are going to explode and then cool as tools of Internet marketing, as far as industry pundits are concerned. There’ll will just be too much hype, even if most Americans don’t yet know what a blog is. Like the Internet boom itself, blogs will be touted as the answer to all problems, then dismissed as being nothing but hype. The truth, of course, will lie somewhere in the middle.
For the time being I will continue to promote blogs to appropriate clients as an important part of their Internet Marketing Toolbox. Blogs help by:
- Allowing clients to make regular updates without the need of a Web master
- Creating more incoming links to their company Web site
- Giving a face or personality to their company (assuming they have one)
The more sticks in the fire, the more effective a site’s marketing will prove.
Rich Brooks
Web Marketing Blogger
