Small Business Trends
Michael Klusek April 29th, 2005
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Small Business Trends. Anita Campbell, Editor
Priya Ganapati writes in Inc.com that business blogs are growing as a business marketing tool, in particular among small businesses.
I believe that the blog as an external marketing vehicle is well suited for smaller businesses, more so than for large corporations.Small businesses, on the other hand, have more freedom to speak directly to their audience. Their target markets are usually narrower. They don’t have millions of shareholders. Therefore, they can speak plainly with less risk of offending someone. Nor do small businesses have to worry about coming up on the receiving end of an Elliott Spitzer subpoena.
Small business owners may not have more time than Fortune 500 CEOs, but they usually need the marketing push from a blog enough that they will make the time. And when they do, the return on investment to their small business is much greater than the return to, say, General Motors when the Vice Chairman starts blogging. Just look at the recent GM earnings release — they’ve got bigger problems than a public blog can solve.
Does this mean that blogs are not important to large corporations? No! Internal (non-public) blogs certainly have an important place in the large corporation. And I believe non-executive employees can blog effectively on their operational slices of the world. But that means a loss of control. How many corporations will feel comfortable about large numbers of their employees blogging publicly is the issue. When it comes to public-facing blogs — for marketing purposes — large corporations are better off being talked about positively in third-party blogs than by having their own blogs. The The smart corporations monitor other blogs closely. They learn from and respond to what is being said.
With smaller businesses, it’s the other way around. The likelihood of being talked about in other blogs is much lower. Small businesses get greater marketing leverage from starting and promoting their own blogs.
