Jeremy Wright's Blog Marketing


Marketing blogs as a tool, not how you use blogs as a marketing tool

[Disclosures: Disclosure #1 is that I have met Jeremy and had occasional chances to exchange emails/blog comments with him over the last year. Disclosure #2 is that Jeremy's publisher sent me a copy of this book, hoping I would review it. Disclosure #3 is that I am mentioned in the book twice. I was aware of one mention before I read the book, because I saw it in an excerpt online. I only became aware of the second mention once I read the book.]

I would never ignore the positives of Jeremy's book. So, it's definitely worth mentioning:

The book covers what may be familiar ground to me and to many existing bloggers, but will be useful to those looking for an introduction. And introduction to the basics of blogging, and not just the technical and tactical basics, but the, for lack of a better word, ethical basics. In other words, Jeremy tries to help the newbie get into the spirit of blogging. It's valuable advice for anyone who is interested in getting the most out of their blogging efforts. Far too many people and companies start blogging because they think they should...and their expectations are all out of proportion for the amount of investment they're willing to put in. It's amusing how smart people who wouldn't expect something for nothing in just about any other area of their business or life somehow expect the very act of putting up a blog to reap fantastic rewards. Jeremy does connect the dots between intention and execution and results.

The book also compiles some valuable advice for those approaching the time-suck that is blogging with trepidation. Jeremy really gives an idea of how a company, particularly a small business, can ease into blogging, test the waters, avoid over-investing time and money too early and burning out. This is good advice, and you won't find many blogging gurus who tell a company owner they can get started by just doing a little reading, writing and commenting...all within 20 minutes per day. Yet, this attitude is likely comforting to the average person wondering how they fit in one more task to build their company.

So, to sum up: Blog Marketing is another simple, readable overview of blogging, its many applications and its natural evolution from use as only a personal diary or pontificating platform, to use as a viable and genuine business applcation.

But I can't help saying:

This is the second book I've read that has purported to be about how to use blogs as a revolutionary new marketing tool. In both cases, as a marketing person, I felt the books would have benefitted from a more accurate title. If you are looking to understand blogs as a general business tool, and to get high level information on all the various ways they can streamline and modernize your business, then this book will be helpful. If you were looking for an in-depth look at how to craft a blog marketing strategy that integrates with your company's existing marketing strategy, and then how to build a tactical plan, and then how to set yourself up to be able to measure how successfully you're executing to plan...then I have yet to read the book that provides that information. This particular book starts talking about creating a blogging strategy on page 191. That's 2/3 in.

And Jeremy misses a few opportunities to share more specific, and therefore more compelling, evidence of how blogging impacts the bottom line. Early on in the book he tells the story of 2 of his clients, small fashion boutiques, that credit blogging with enabling them to open new location. Now some of that is attributed to letting customer feedback about the best geographical locations, but there is also the implication that the blog helped boost sales and generate visibility for the store via press mentions they may not have otherwise gotten. I felt myself yearning for a little more than these general anecdotes and a lot more specificity. It would give just the right tone of credibility to mention one prominent press mention that came to them from the blog, one promotion they did via blog that was a huge success, one poll they executed on their blog that fed them surprising information about where their customers were. And an even more unexplored gem in the world of writing about blogs as a business tool: how much of the positive results were exactly the kind of results they planned for and were expecting to get. Seriously, not every positive outcome from business blogging is a happy accident! But you wouldn't know it from reading about business blogging. [BTW: This is not actually a knock on only Jeremy's book specifically. This quality of confident conclusions drawn from purely anecdotal evidence is a common thread through most business books...and is one reason the list of business books I really hold on to and recommend is so small.]

The Denali Flavors story is one excellent exception, where the VP from Denali provides actual stats of how their web traffic improved and reveals some of the tactics they executed to achieve exactly that kind of traffic improvement. Since their stated goal was simply awareness-building, you can understand why they consider the blogging program an excellent investment and real success. There's no talk here of seeing huge revenue jumps or market share increases, and that's OK. They may eventually try to experiment to see if they can achieve such increases with help from their blogs, but for now they had a limited scope and specific measures to indicate that they achieved their goals.

Another quibble with the book is occasionally sloppy editing. Not typos and grammar, but structure. For example, bulleted lists precede associated headlined paragraphs on numerous occasions. Sometimes the language of the bullet point isn't exactly mirrored by the headline of the associated paragraph. (Page 46 if anyone wants a representative example.) Sometimes you think you're getting associated paragraphs, but only a couple of bullets get covered, or it veers off into paragraphs that don't seem to be mirrored by a preceding bullet point. It leads to a general herky-jerky feeling to the book.

In conclusion: I know there are long-time blogging advocates who think that blogging is sullied when it is too closely aligned with corporate goals. Jeremy may be one of these guys. Scoble and Shel seem to be. But let's face it right now: the majority of business people who want to give blogging a try, especially if they're going to invest dollars into it, are going to want to see if it can integrate blogging with their marketing, communications and customer care initiatives. This book does not scratch that surface. And it's an itch that needs to be scratched.

Buy Blog Marketing at Amazon.com

Posted: Sun - January 15, 2006 at 11:01 AM       EmailFeedback

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