NY Times : blogs make perfect marketing sense

There’s always press on blogs as personal journals but today’s New York Times Magazine praises business blogging and weblog marketing. The magazine reviews the year in ideas from A to Z with marketing blogs the idea of the year for letter B.

The Times tells it like it is – “From a marketing perspective, blogs make perfect sense:“

• They are cheap to produce, immersive and interactive.
• It’s easy to measure their readership and response rates.
• For small companies, blogs are a quick and dirty promotional tool that cuts out the middleman.
• For big companies, blogs are a tool of humanization — an informal, chatty, down-to-earth voice amid the din of bland corporate-speak.

The Times discusses a couple blogs and why they worked for marketing.

Nike’s ”Art of Speed” blog which ran this summer was a great way to reach the young, hip and carefully shod — those who bristle when products get pitched at them but enjoy discovering cool new things on their own. Nike’s blog ran for 20 days, posting short films, speed-related trivia, inspirational athlete stories and so forth.

General Motors, labeled a corporate dinosaur by the Times, launched a blog focusing on the 50th anniversary of the G.M. small-block V-8 engine — a touchstone for hot-rod enthusiasts. Entries feature some legendary small-block-powered sports cars of the past and are sprinkled with posts from G.M. engineers touting horsepower and torque levels. Readers chime in with their own small-block stories and post questions on the future of small-block technology. It’s clearly blogging by car geeks, for car geeks.

Michael Wiley, G.M.’s director of new media and the man behind its blog told the Times: ”It’s a different attitude from our corporate Web site. It’s more grass roots.”

Bob Cargill, senior creative director for Yellowfin Direct Marketing tells the Times you can form an ongoing relationship with customers.

Law firms need to get with it. Some grass roots relationship building with current and prespective clients is sorely needed by most firms. Fortunately, law firms can get it done with a marketing blog. Like the Times says, blogs are cheap and easy.