Blogging, an untapped brand building opportunity for the top 50 Irish companies

Posted by: Krishna De | Posted on: December 14th, 2006 | 0 Comments | Posted in: Business blogging, Marketing online, Media strategies

A recent survey by Ipsos MORI of 2,200 Europeans found that blogs are considered a more trusted source of information than TV advertising and e-mail marketing, in otherwords are becoming a force to be reckoned with as a means of advertising products and services.

But not all Europeans are aware of the existence of blogs with awareness being ranked as:

• France – 90%
• Italy 58%
• Germany 55%
• Spain 51%
• UK – 50%

Actually I am suprised the numbers were quite so high as when I am at events and public speaking and mention the term blog, less than 30% of the audience will recognise the term and even less will have read one.

Unfortunately there were no reported statistics for Ireland.

Typically when I am speaking, those who are aware of blogging also consider them more as online diaries.  The idea of blogging as part of your marketing strategiy is not something many have considered.

Earlier this year ATP reported that having reviewed the top 50 companies in Ireland, not one of the companies had a blog.  Why is this? 

A search in Google found one item under “Ireland Business Blogs“ and under “Business Blogs Ireland“ there were no entries.

Perhaps the following information may encourage the Irish marketers on the top 50 companies in Ireland to reconsider why blogging could be an inexpensive marketing strategy. 

The survey identified that they were a more trusted source of information than some other media with the results being identified as:

• 30% of people trusting Newspapers for information
• 24% trusting Blogs 
• 17% trusting Advertising
• 14% trusting Email marketing

This is probably because of blogs being considered as a form of online word of mouth.

So is this increasing evidence that if you are not blogging about your business, product or service, you need at least to check out who is saying what about you online?

You can be sure that the first of the top 50 companies in Ireland who start to blog will get amazing traffic to their website and increased brand awareness for being the first to start a business blog – can you just imagine the media coverage and the number of people checking out your blog on your website? 

With the ever increasing pressure on marketing budgets and the need to prove marketing and advertising effectiveness, be assured you can track statistics and therefore measure the ROI of what is already an inexpensive medium.

So if there are any chief executives and marketing directors of the top 50 Irish companies reading this blog and want to talk to someone who used to walk in their shoes and now blogs, feel free to contact me as I would be only too pleased to share my enthusiasm for this great medium. 

In fact I am so convinced of the power of the medium of blogging to build your brand and attract more clients and customers, I will provide consulting at no cost to which ever chief executive or marketing director of the top 50 Irish companies approaches me first about getting their blog up and running.  Consider it my Christmas gift. 

So are you ready to build your online brand with a blog? 

Source: Reuters

Update – 14 December 2006

As we have had some enquiries about how we suport businesses in getting started with implementing new media solutions such as blogging and podcasting we have outlined out seven steps to getting your blog up and running here