Blog marketing

As one of the newest media, blogs hold many advantages over traditional advertising.

The World Wide Web is an ever-change place, and because of the prevalence of young, technology-savvy users there are always new and fresh ideas being created. The blog phenomenon is an excellent example of an idea, which has originated on the Internet, expanding into the mainstream and becoming a powerful voice in "the real world". Blogs, an abbreviation of "web-log", have transformed from largely personal journals shared among friends into an interlinked community with numerous members around the world. Because of the sheer number of users, more and more marketers are now targeting the blog community and including online blog marketing as part of their promotional strategy.

Online blog marketing can take many forms. Many companies now create their own blogs in order to better communicate with their customers. The main difference between a coporate blog and a coporate website is that a blog can be mroe frequently updated, and therefore can bring the most up-to-date information to the targeted audience. A blog also allows instant feedback, and will create a sense of community among the costumers who decide to visit and contribute to the blog. While a website is still a great tool to provide general information, blogs can be more suitable to provide answers to specific questions. More and more companies, especially companies that are more technologically inclined, have realized the effectiveness of online blog marketing in strengthening rapport with their customers; therefore, more and more corporate blogs are being created every day.

Since a blog requires regular maintenance, and functions mainly as a tool to retain existing customers, online blog marketing is indeed a longer term time investment. However, there are many free blog services, as well as professional blog publishing agencies that offer free start-up packages. Therefore, starting up a blog is monetarily very cost-effective, as opposed to the traditional way of following up with customers through mailing or phone. Once a blog is well-established, and deemed interesting enough, other bloggers will link to the blog, creating a vast online network that can be very powerful in generating words-of-mouths. Hence, online blog marketing is a very influential means of promotion in today's Internet culture.