So many marketers think that blogging’s the first step in social media (image credit: Lego blogger by minifig). As indicated last week, on the contrary, blogging should not be the first step. Further, it may not ever be the right step for a company for a variety of reasons:
- Time from a resource perspective: Some companies just can’t commit to the long, weekly grind that blogging demands.
- Time from a results perspective: Others may not have six months to a year to get results. Community development and readership requires more than just a blog launch.
- Blogging may not be the right platform: In some cases, the community’s conversation may be occurring in other venues, like social networks. Or vis a vis video and podcasts.
- Subject is anti-social: Company or organization’s subject matter expertise does not lend itself to a conversation. Examples, defense industry (go missiles!), manufacturer of simple goods or singular products like philips screwdrivers, .
- The required social networking to make a blog successful may be too much: Let’s face it. 2008 is not 2003. It’s not a special event to have a blog and getting one socialized requires an enormous effort.
Research and understanding ones own
For example, at Thursday’s Forth Worth PRSA session on social media, we went through the draft Social Media Content Creation Process with a local arts organization. In our research, it became apparent that there’s not a vibrant blogging community for the arts in Forth Worth, but Facebook is a different matter. As a result, we decided to develop a Facebook community strategy instead of blogging.
Blogging offers a great series of advantages, from SEO and thought leadership to lead capture (through calls-to-action) and community development. At the same time, it’s not a panacea.