{"id":130,"date":"2005-08-29T22:29:22","date_gmt":"2005-08-29T21:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/?p=130"},"modified":"2005-08-29T22:42:44","modified_gmt":"2005-08-29T21:42:44","slug":"blogging-as-a-marketing-device","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/?p=130","title":{"rendered":"Blogging as a marketing device"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WordPress blogger <a href=\"http:\/\/www.buzzmachine.com\/\">Jeff Jarvis<\/a> wrote about his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.buzzmachine.com\/index.php\/dell\">experiences<\/a> with Dell in today&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/media.guardian.co.uk\/mediaguardian\/story\/0,7558,1558248,00.html\">MediaGuardian<\/a>.  I&#8217;m afraid that you&#8217;ll have to register (it&#8217;s probably free).   He has followed it up <a href=\"http:\/\/www.buzzmachine.com\/index.php\/2005\/08\/29\/dell-calling\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Given the sudden increase in my blog posts that refer to the Guardian of a Monday and Thursday, astute readers will know that I&#8217;m merely following the media and online sections of the paper because I&#8217;m interested in them (hey, I write articles and work with IT, sometimes, surely I&#8217;m allowed to?)<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t say that I&#8217;ve had a problem with Dell when ordering new, but I have endured a few headaches with their support service &#8211; not enough, however, to rant about it in this blog.  I can sympathise with Jeff, even thought it looks like he has moved over to the other side and bought an Apple&#8230;  There are times when you just wish computer manufacturers (and others) would do the right thing from the start&#8230;none of this faffing about with &#8220;returns&#8221; procedures, etc.  If the customer wants a refund, it&#8217;s often the best publicity you can buy&#8230;well, I certainly think so.<\/p>\n<p>What I was interested to read in Jeff&#8217;s article is the fact that you can search for any brand name (or product, or person) followed by the word &#8220;sucks&#8221; to find out how much bad karma is attached&#8230; Don&#8217;t worry about trying it yourself, just take a look at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.clarkeching.com\/2005\/01\/arrrrrrgggggggh.html\">this<\/a> and see what I mean.<\/p>\n<p>I was more interested to read that it appears Dell aren&#8217;t following this bad karma, nor are they following what folks are saying about their products in blogs (may be they are, but there&#8217;s little evidence of it.)<\/p>\n<p>Surely reading blogs makes good sense?  And especially for large corporates with &#8220;product&#8221; out there.  It&#8217;s free marketing.  Need a product survey&#8230;check some blogs.  Need to know what to put in the next version&#8230;check some blogs.  [Product] Bloggers are the knowledgeable end-users that corporates should tap into for guidance, for direction and for the honest truth about how to improve and move forward.  Similarly, the best way to learn about what&#8217;s wrong with your business (and how it can be fixed or improved) is to ask your employees &#8211; they know a lot more than than they are given credit for.<\/p>\n<p>Once again, I believe that this is another case for &#8220;<strong>do not underestimate the power of the blog<\/strong>&#8220;, especially for marketing purposes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s MediaGuardian carries an article about a bad experience with Dell&#8230;are Dell (and other manufacturers) reading blogs?  If not, should they be?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}