Investor’s Business Daily: Managing for Success

Blogs have become a popular networking source for all types of businesses. Besides having the potential of creating new customers and interest in one’s own company, blogs are a way in which companies can learn what others are saying about their own company to make improvements as well. Martin Schwimmer used this type of marketing pitch in 2001 to get his business up and running; he created The Trademark Blog, which is maintained by the Schwimmer Mitchell Law Firm. In a way this can be related to the article “The Strength of Weak Ties” by Mark S. Granovetter. Martin Schwimmer did not know the people which responded to his blog. They happened to find him through a search engine, which eventually led to benefit both parties involved. The way in which people hear or read about this specific blog can be considered weak ties. In 2006, approximately 50% of the referrals were a result of the clients with which Martin Schwimmer had been in contact with through his blog.

Andy Sernovitz, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s founding CEO and a marketing expert, uses his idea that “people are already talking about you and your business right now on social networks and blogs” (Managing for Success, Gary M. Stern of Investor’s Business Daily). One of his ventures was WOMMA, with the mission of promoting and improving marketing through the use of blogs. If there is a blog pertaining to a certain topic and a specific company is involved somehow in the post, it will drive people to website of that business. And then within one’s own social network, news about this product is spread, and business grows. An example of ideas businesses use to improve their sales is offering contests, where the winner gets some product(i.e. furniture as in the case of Smartbargains); this generates a great amount of “buzz” and new business for the company. Other companies join together to promote sales of two different products, as in the case of Starbucks and Mitch Albom, the author of “The Five People You Meet in Heaven.”

Other social networking websites that have the same idea as the The Trademark Blog and WOMMA include MySpace, Friendster, Linked-In, and Gather, to name a few. There are multiple ways to promote business through blogs; it is a new and effective tool for both businesses and customers alike.

On a side note, the way AIM Fight works is shown here:  

The score of a person’s screen name is the sum of the current number of people who have that screen name listed as a buddy, out to three degrees. The score isn’t an exact number of third-degree connections, but how many connections there are relative to other AIM users.