Blog

August 2009 – Rachel Cass writes…

To blog to not to blog?

Thanks to social networking we now feel as if we’ve got ‘friends’ who are not only all over the world, but who are experts in everything from abseiling to zebra watching.

Whatever you want to know, you can find someone on the web who has been there, done that and you will often take their opinions into account when making a decision. For example when booking a hotel, how many of us look on tripadvisor.com to see what the food’s really like, or how comfortable the beds really are. As clued up consumers we just don’t trust big organisations to give us a truthful account of products or services so we ask our peers what they think.

For years PR experts have said that word of mouth is the best form of recommendation and that’s exactly what blogs and other forms of social networking can be  – cyber word of mouth. So it makes sense to work hard at ensuring your customers get the best experience possible of your product or service to ensure that all that gossip flying around the net is good stuff.

PR is all about two-way communication and blogs can be used to make sure you’re hitting the spot with consumers. Reading what other people have to say about your product or service may be a very public way to be told about your faults but at least when we know we’ve got something wrong, we can do something about it. Fail to listen to public opinion and that’s when the problems set in so make sure you keep tabs on what’s being written about you.

Positive blogs and posts can be so much more effective than advertising which companies throw thousands of pounds at each year. Everyone knows that adverts are created by clever people to carefully portray a specific image but genuine glowing reports from bloggers can be worth a mint in terms of PR....and it’s all free!

Finally, if your company or individual staff run blogs which are followed by others, it can be a great way to ensure your website is up there in the search rankings thanks to an increasing number of hits.