Blog for Business’s Sake?
Back in the heydays of Internet, the Philippines' capability in doing business online, particularly on payment facilities have been a great issue even up to this very day. Good news, PayPal is now in the Philippines.
For most people, blogging is one crazy idea to do especially when it comes to incorporating it in business. In fact, Heather Armstrong got dooced [a verb that means getting ‘fired for blogging’] when she discussed her job on her blog.
Today, it is one venue where businesses can find a potential client or create profitable opportunity.
In 2004, Merriam-Webster declared the word ‘blog’ as ‘Word of the Year’, which rightfully earned its attention even to businesses and corporations. Jason Calacanis, founder of Weblogs Incorporated and successfully grew its portfolio into 85 blogs. In October 2005, he then sold his blogs to AOL for US$25 million. Quite a hefty amount of money, isn’t it?
Prior to being popular these days, in December 1997, blog or Weblog, this has its original name, coined by an online diarist Jorn Barger meaning ‘logging for the Web’. Later on Peter Merholz shortens the word to ‘blog’ in April 1999.
With this scenario, blogging has been a popular mainstream tool, which is included in social network sites like MySpace, Multiply, Friendster and many more. Businesses have seen this vehicle as a way to rev-up their respective ventures. More and more people are accustomed to this way of providing information targeted on a niche audience.
There are in fact three reasons why small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the Philippines need to consider blogging for business’s sake:
- Low-cost Promotion. For SMEs, the greatest challenge they mostly face is setting aside a budget for their marketing efforts. Having a Web site is not sufficient to push or promote products and services. It is because, the site’s capability to be profitable hasn’t exhausted or maximized.
Adding a blog makes a company build another Web site. It allows a site to increase its potential to earn online like having Google AdSense in a site. Or the ideal way is create gimmick or maybe include printable discount coupons or maybe a pass that would excite visitors to become clickers. All one needs to spend is time to craft entries for his/her/their blogs. Perhaps, that can only be done in 15 minutes maximum.
- Another Source of Revenue. Blogs do provide free place to advertise anything, so why not use its capabilities? Any business owner would definitely want to have a multiple source of revenue and one cannot deny the reality and the ability, blogs can give.
The best way to start and generate revenue from blogs is to place pay per click or pay per performance ads on the site. Each visitor to the blog site has its prospect of turning visitors to be clickers that will translate it into revenue.
- Promote Loyal Visitors. When a blog site is visited more often due to its regular updating of content, it is more likely it shows or convinces advertisers to that site that the content itself sells.
To have loyal visitors may also mean the site also fuels the buying drive for potential buyers or market. This scenario spells out the difference because the blog can truly be a means to generate income even if the owners are asleep since the Web operates 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.
A blog is no longer limited to an online diary, which is run by an individual recounting his or her personal adventures like in LiveJournal and other online journals, but rather it has evolved into several types depending on its genre such as vlog, linklog, sketchlog, photolog, tumblogs; but it is already used to improve communications and for businesses—it is to market externally, for branding or PR reasons.
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