Interwebers

This is the first of a series of posts looking at blogs from a business marketing perspective. More specifically, the business marketing mix. That’s right, the 4 p’s of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion. 

The four P’s above are controlled through a marketing manager subject to the internal and external constraints of the marketing environment. You want to make decisions that center the circles over people in your target market generating a positive response and creating a perceived value. The further away from the center any one of the circles is the less you serve of your potential market.

Your blog is a product. Your readers are the customers. 

Re-read that. That’s probably the smartest thing I’ll say in this entire post.

The Wikipedia business definition for “product” is: anything that can be offered to a market that might satisfy a want or need. 

Some of the things that make up a product are:

• Brand Name
• Functionality/Usefullness
• Styling
• Quality

Brand Name: 

Most bloggers begin their interwebing careers with little to no brand value – meaning no one will go to our blog just because we write it. This presents one of the biggest challenges bloggers face: building a readership. There are exceptions. CNN anchor Anderson Cooper is an established brand name with a large TV viewing audience through which he promotes his blog: ac360. He could launch his blog, plug it on his show, and get over 10,000 hits on his first day. But Anderson is lucky. He’s already a brand; brand: Anderson Cooper, and he has a large TV viewing audience. If Coco-Cola, the most recognizable brand in the world, launches a new line of cola, people will buy it the first day because they know Coco-Cola. If I launched the EXACT SAME soda under the name Cal Soda (my initials + soda) no one would buy it; at least not at first. I need to build the brand name Cal Soda before anyone will buy my product based on the value of the name alone. 

Most bloggers start with a brand value of zero. On day 1, your blog has one visiter: you. You will only have one visitor until you start spreading the word while writing good posts. Build your brand, build your product, get readers in the door.

Functionality/Usefullness:

Why do people read your blog (buy your product)? Because it has value to them. They have something to gain by visiting your site. It could be entertaining, educational, insightful, fun, whatever. If your product has something to offer someone at the right price (FREEEEEEE), they will buy it. If it’s free, err, I mean FREEEEEEE, but doesn’t provide a function/use for them, they’ll check it out once but probably never come back. 

Styling:

To add value to your product, you need to do it your way. If your product lacks its own style, it’ll get lost in the shelves. No matter what you write about, your blog is your personal creation. By adding your name and your face, you’ve begun creating something unique. If you lack web designing experience, do as much as you can customizing WordPress or Blogger templates. They are designed with newbs in mind. 

Quality:

Most bloggers aren’t professional journalists. That dusnt meen we hav 2 right lik idiots!!!11! Would you drive a car that someone designed and built as quickly as they could without any knowledge of automobiles and mechanics and no system of quality control? If you want to have a good product, it needs to have quality. You’d better know what you’re talking about, do any necessary research, and proof read that bad boy.

When we don’t take care of the product side of marketing, we shift our product circle in a way that shrinks our market coverage and our perceived value. 

Simply put: fewer readers.