Blogging

In May of 2005, Businessweek featured a cover story titled, “Blogs Will Change Your Business” by Stephen Baker and Heather Green. This was right as blogs were starting to reach a large audience, but before big social networks like Facebook and Twitter had any sizable market presence. Nevertheless, the online version of the story continued to receive so much attention for such a long period of time that Businessweek updated the story in February of 2008 to fix and update more than 20 notes. But even after an extensive revision of the story, the overall message stayed the same: businesses that figure out blogging acquire a competitive advantage over those that choose to ignore the phenomenon.

One thing is unquestionably true about blogs – they exist, and the number of them is growing every day. As of Sept. 21, 2011, there are 171,637,335 identified blogs on the internet, and 95,702 new blogs popped up in the last 24 hours (stats taken from BlogPulse.com). How many of those blogs are potential customers? How many of them are talking about your business, positively or negatively? Of those that are talking about your business, how many people do they reach, and how effective are they at communicating their message?

Businesses that fail to monitor the online discussion of what they are doing are at risk of missing out on opportunities to correct misinformation or respond to consumers’ concerns. They will also miss out on learning what consumers care about. “Think of the implications for businesses of getting an up-to-the-minute read on what the world is thinking.” Advertisers can track responses to their ad campaigns, and film studios can see which movies are generating buzz, for example.

Businesses aren’t the only ones that can benefit from understanding blogs. A growing number of people from an unlikely source are turning to blogs to get their careers of the ground – academics. Sarah-Louise Quinnell is a PhD graduate and managing editor of the blog PhD2Published. She wrote an online article recently for The Guardian titled, “Don’t doubt the value of blogging in academic publishing”. She says that many of her colleagues have dismissed blogging even though it “encourages wider participation and generates instant debate.” She argues that the academic community should embrace it, especially researchers early in their careers.

Academic journals are invaluable for publishing well written and analytically rigorous research papers, but getting a paper into a journal requires an extensive editing process and can take up to two years, according to Dr. Quinnell. Conversely, blogs “allow for immediate engagement and debate of current issues.” If it really can take up to two years to get published, imagine how much could have changed in that time frame.

Dr. Quinnell’s article and the Businessweek story both argue that blogs shouldn’t be regarded as unimportant. All businesses and researchers don’t need to maintain their own professionally written blogs, but they need to be aware of what blogs can do. This will lead them to monitor what is being said and what is important in the minds of the people they are trying to serve. In an increasingly competitive world, squandering any competitive advantage could be the difference between success and failure.