Direct marketing copywriter Robert Bly argues that blogs are a big waste of time:
Should marketers add blogging to their arsenal of tactics? Will it help sell more products and services? Or is it, as I suspect, a complete waste of time ‚Äî a pure vanity publication that won’t pay you back even one thin dime for your effort?
How quaint. Apparently quite the online marketing expert (his own brochureware site uses frames; hoot!), Bly writes:
I have yet to find a single marketer who says that a business blog has gotten him a positive return on investment. I know plenty of online marketers who make millions of dollars a year from their Web sites and e-zines, for instance. But I’ve not seen a blog whose creator says that the time and effort spent on it has directly put money into his pocket.
Blog ROI. He cracks me up. For starters, this is like arguing religion or politics to try to talk to an die-hard direct marketer about anything one click-through removed from a sale. Why not talk ROI about public relations or public speaking or customer service or brand advertising, for that matter. (No, it isn’t branding that sells Nike (a company that has seen the wisdom to invest in blogs, incidentally), it’s all that great telemarketing, direct mail and email newsletters, I’m sure.)
But I’ll take the bait.
Let’s be pedantic: ROI of course stands for “return on investment.” So, what is the investment in setting up a blog? Hmmm. Using Blogger.com software and Blogspot hosting, the cash investment is a big fat zero, of course, like many other blog softwares, but let’s assume you go all in and buy a multi-seat licence for Movable Type 3.x and you pay for hosting above and beyond your existing web site, plus an over-priced web developer, you’re talking an investment to get set up of $2,000 to maybe $10,000 if you’re a complete idiot and hire the most expensive blog designer on the planet. More likely, if you’re a largish company, you’ll get someone in IT to set it up for nothing in a few hours. Beyond that, the only other “investment” is 10 minutes here, an hour there, as you’re inspired to write. Or, maybe you hire someone, but most bloggers don’t know the value of a dollar and can be had cheap. (I know of what I speak: I run a web site call “Business Blog Consulting.”) Point is, it’s an extremely low-cost medium. Makes running an email newsletter look like an expensive proposition, not to mention a royal pain in the ass.
So, can blogging earn back the “investment” ranging from nothing to a few thousand bucks? Bob writes it “won’t pay you back even one thin dime” and he hasn’t “seen a blog whose creator says that the time and effort spent on it has directly put money into his pocket.” Sounds like his research was exhaustive.
Just to clear the palate, let’s give at least a nod to ad-supported blogs: I know that Rafat Ali, Tig Tillinghast and Steve Hall are making more or less full-time livings off of their business blogs, not to mention Nick Denton, Jason Calacanis and Henry Copeland who are betting on much bigger commerical ad-supported blog plays, so far with every sign of success.
But Bly is talking about marketing, so let’s stick to marketing. How about BizNetTravel, a travel agency (and former client of mine), who credits its blog (more than a year old) with driving a significant amount of business (I was paid regularly for more than a year for my blogging services; I can’t see this small business regularly flushing money down the toilet without seeing a return on that investment). Denton recently bought the rights to a film with an affinity to one of his blogs, as noted in a story in the New Yorker, and his director of business development (yes, he has a director of business development) told me the other day it’s selling like hotcakes. MightyGoods is taking an affiliate marketing spin on a blog; I don’t know details of how her business is doing, but I think it’s a great idea. T-shirtKing.com says its blog is the best direct marketing program it has in its arsenal, out-performing its email newsletter, which was burning out. Keiko Groves is making enough money selling her original clothing through her blog to put herself through college.
But these are all small businesses. Earlier today I noted that Jupiter Research claims that it has tracked several business leads to its blogs. I know something of Jupiter’s prices: one contract would be more than enough to justify all the development costs and hours of its analysts’ time. Or, if that’s not compelling enough, what about Sun Microsystems, whose president and COO, Jonathan Schwartz, writes a blog and told Business Week he “first suspected that his blog was a success when his salespeople began reporting that customers were reading his posts and sealing deals faster.” Not convinced? How about Bill Gates, a man who knows the value of a dollar, raving about how great blogs are. Oh, and let’s not forget Howard Dean who raised millions of dollars though his campaign’s blog and basically revolutionized politics forever in the process.
I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. In fact, that’s exactly why I started this blog: to catalog all the evidence of this trend. I have to agree with Steve Hall’s reaction to Bly’s column: he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. One gets the sense he’s only read about blogs in magazines. What else explains why he’s still writing in that archaic dead-tree medium? (Yeah, blogs are a waste of time with no provable ROI, but writing a one-time opinion piece is a magazine, whose web page doesn’t even hyperlink to Bly’s crappy site, is ROI-riffic.)
Oh, and how did I discover Bly’s article in the first place? Through DMNews.com’s email newsletter? Har! Like I need to subscribe to another email newsletter (or that I’d trust my email address to a company with “direct marketing” in their name). No, through a blog — duh.
DMNews: Can Blogging Help Market Your Product?
