09.12.07
How NOT to deploy a blog
I market socially in local networking groups, national trade shows, local trade shows, and here on my blog. To do that much marketing, I have to expose some of my techniques and secrets behind online marketing and what works. That being said, it takes a LOT more than a couple of tricks to be successful with your online marketing. A good example is blogging.
Folks are now waking up to the power of blogs, and how they can help their company’s image, their search engine optimization (SEO), and how to better communicate with customers. Unfortunately, most people setting up blogs are too lazy to realize their true benefits. And guess what else? Mediocre web design shops profit from this laziness.
People always want a quick fix - like taking a diet pill instead of eating right and actually doing the exercise they need. Hey, that sounds like me! 
So… when most folks realize the power of blogs, they say “I need a blog”, and there are many hosting companies that are more than happy to set one up for them, just like me (I sell blogs like this one for $50 per year, which includes a domain name). But here is the bad news. A good, useful blog isn’t just software. A good, useful blog is one that has information in it that clients actually seek out because it is useful to them.
Web 2.0 web technology, such as blogs, is changing the way information is being distributed around the net, as search engines now process this content differently than regular web sites. In fact, entirely new search engines are emerging that threaten Google and Yahoo because they work differently, put the collaborative search power into the hands of the people, and they are VERY effective. While I can tell you all about these engines and how they work in another blog post, this whole new genre of search and marketing power is called social networking and social bookmarking.
Do hosting companies and little one-man web shops take advantage of all of these features for their clients? Of course not. They just say - “we can give you a blog, it will help your SEO”, and most people unfortunately take the bait and set it up without any additional help or consulting. What happens next is an inevitable one-way ticket to an empty blog web site. Gartner recently did a study where they announced that 200 million blogs are abandoned, and while the number sounds high to me, I can easily see why so many blogs are abandonded.
Some examples of how NOT to deploy your blog
This week, I checked out the web site of a company located near me, whose name I prefer not to mention. Their web site was recently redesigned by a graphic designer that doesn’t really understand SEO, social bookmarking, or Web2.0 programming. How do I know this? Easy - from my years of taking drab web sites and making them work better. What this company’s new web site became, unfortunately, is nothing but an online print brochure, with some free blog software and photographs thrown into it. They probably think it is great. But 4-5 years from now, if they are lucky, they will realize that they missed an opportunity to have a site that could have added a lot more value to their company.
This company’s web site has a blog in it that says it is a knowledge base for answering customer questions. But it is empty! All this does, is send web site visitors to a dead-end, and it shows the world that this company is not really serious about their web site. Lesson: An empty blog or forum is worse than no blog or forum at all.
The Realtor Blog
Then there is a Realtor that has a “blog” in his/her web site. This Realtor has an under-performing web site, complete with an annoying Flash intro movie. If you really want to self-destruct your web site, put a flash into in front of it. The Flash intro fad disappeared (thank goodness) almost as soon as it started, waaay back in 1999. After you suffer through the flash intro, you are greeted with a very basic web site that has a “blog” in it. It can barely be considered a real blog, because it doesn’t take advantage of any of the latest Web2.0 features that blogs need to work well, like tagging.
Why is this blog useless?
- It has only three posts in it.
- Someone along the way told this Realtor that a blog is a diary (that is how blogs originated), so he/she uses it as a personal political soapbox. It is OK to have some of this kind of content in your blog, but it shouldn’t be the only content in the blog.
- Instead of educating folks about real estate, the area, schools, financing, or home improvement, the blog has three negative posts that complain about how the media affects the real estate market.
- All three posts say “I am selling more homes now than ever, even though the media says things are so bad”. That may be true, but it smacks of desperation.
- As I mentioned above, it doesn’t have social bookmarking or social networking technologies in it. This means that no one will find the site from alternative search engines.
- There is no SEO technology in the blog, so traditional search engines such as Google won’t index it well.
- No customer-focused content
Everyone has heard of the old famous saying in real estate - “The three things that matter most in real estate are; LOCATION, LOCATION, and LOCATION”. Well, in the world of blogs and Web2.0, the saying goes like something like this: “The three things that matter most with blogs are; CONTENT, CONTENT, and CONTENT”.
Before you start writing content like crazy for your blog, remember - it takes the right combination of design, technologies, content, time, and persistence to get the most out of your blog. Don’t just blog because you feel that it is something you HAVE to do to market yourself online. That isn’t true. If you write your blog content with customers in mind, they will repay you with their business. If you would like for me to help you with your web site, give me a call.
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