Putting the role that blogging nowadays plays into perspective, from my viewpoint, one of the interesting things is how blogs have evolved into multipurpose communication and marketing tools. Blogs are not only used as a chronologically categorized publishing of information anymore, but they’ve also become effective marketing and branding extensions for relevant third-parties.
These third parties can for instance be businesses with commercial intentions who are deliberately seeking quality blogs with intend to establish a marketing or advertising partnership. Needless to say, with the huge number of blogs around, it’s very likely these third parties will find bloggers who are willing to place advertising banners and / or affiliate links on their pages in return for income or commission.
Thus the blog effectively becomes an ‘extension‘, fulfilling a specific function for a certain third party.
When looking blogs from this point of view, it’s clear that the power of a blog is not in the blog itself, but in the way that the blog is used and what characteristics make it possible for the blog to be used as such. In the end, blogs are only web pages themselves.
I think that in order to really understand why blogs have become such powerful multipurpose tools, used for exposure, marketing, branding etc. there is a need to widen our perspective a little.
Where I’m getting at is that In general it’s important to understand that it’s not the blogs themselves, that decide about how effective they can be for a specific function (for instance as a marketing or branding tool), but it’s the interconnected structure of the collective, namely the Blogosphere that decides this.
The interconnected structure of the blogosphere is realized not only through links (in comments and articles), but also through specific services that are geared either totally or partially towards a collection of related niche blogs.
Let’s take for example, Review Me,which connects bloggers with advertisers who are looking to gain exposure for their product or services. On one hand a blogger can make money by writing content and publishing this content on their own blog, while the third party advertiser can gain exposure and traffic as a result of this article which might be published on a particular high traffic blog.
As a result, the published web page (a review of a product in this case) can potentially be linked to by other blogs, automatically be shown to subscribers through RSS and will show up in blog search engines such as Technorati.
If you take the time to think about this, you will probably come to the following conclusion : Any way you turn it, no matter what type of service is connecting blogs with blogs, or blogs with other web pages, without this interconnection there is nothing.
What Do You use Your Blog for ?
In this post, I’ve basically described the power of blogs from my own viewpoint, as a web entrepreneur. I look at blogs from a somewhat more business orientated perspective.
You however, might be using your blog(s) for a different purpose. You could for instance start a blog as support tool for your customers, to receive feedback. You could also be using a blog as a web traffic generation tool towards your Image Only - Portfolio, just to name something.
Whatever the purpose of your blogging, I’m interested to hear how you experience your blog as a useful and helpful tool. What is it that makes you stick with blogging and in which ways are blogs helping you accomplish your goals ?
StumbleUpon
FaceBook
Twitter
FriendFeed
I am in full agreement that it is the power of the connections that makes blogging a useful tool for business and for building relationships.
One of the most amazing things is that you can actually build a business with a blog, showcasing your own talents and skills in order to attract customers, as well as build a community.
My employer asked me to research how we can use a blog in our company in order to drive traffic to a site that will be launched beginning next 2009.
I found out that by creating setting up several niche blogs and investing in link buying targeted traffic is not that hard to get. I’m still looking for new ways too.
Blogs have the potential of becoming even stronger with the addition of new interactive widgets and tools. For example there are already blogs that use “live voice messaging”, video commenting and so on. Personally I was convinced that blogs are great branding and community tools since 2006 when I first started. Now I see no limits for their impact. Very good article, Lex.