Can blogs still be used in a meaningful way by businesses, or have the brand new social media web sites, for instance Twitter and Facebook, superseded this tool? Quite a few years back, many companies left behind their static, flat web sites that lectured customers with specifics that might have been straight from their Annual Reports, and began using blogs. Here they introduced their newest goods and acquired customer input in return, and discovered that blogs were found to be a worthwhile public relations tool.

It’s widely recognized in the business blogosphere that Dell Computers led the way, being among the first businesses to make this kind of a change. Although Dell was an extremely profitable business, a barrier continued to exist concerning the company and its clients, a lot of these consumers had been finding it difficult to communicate and had frustrating problems that weren’t being addressed. Once the company set up to accept blog entries, the transformation in the relationship with customers was remarkable. A similar experience was had by General Motors.

Although some customers continue to opt for normal e-mail newsletters with the newest business news, other individuals are eager to unclog their inboxes and check out a business blog instead. A small business can get through to individuals in all of these ways, each serving different wants. One benefit of using the blog, however, will be that the published information won’t vanish off the bottom of the page as quickly as Twitter updates. Neither will the responses from customers.

As A company leader you always need to be wary about raising your consumers expectations. Although an almost one-on-one relationship may be attainable between a small business and its consumers, bigger businesses won’t have the ability to follow through to all queries or complaints, and this could damage its good name if it is not careful.

One more use for blogging, and one that companies had not even considered initially, is for internal communication. Although workers can keep in touch via email, conference calls or meetings, records of progress can be made on these internal blogs, so keeping team members up-to-date on a specific project or the blog can focus on one department. This method is really an effective way to keep workers informed of business news without their own individual e-mail inbox mounting up to an unmanageable level.

Blogs tend to be the elder sibling in the social networking world, and continue to be much better at delivering information and feedback in a more lasting manner. Once blogging software made it available for a business and its customers to communicate in this way, the lines of communication opened widely. The company can supply up-to-date information about products and services, and clients can reply, thus either side of the relationship benefits.

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