The Power of Blogs and Social Media Web Sites

Blogs and social media web sites, the Web 2.0 tools, are the future battlegrounds of products and services. Companies who will and can embrace these platforms will be ahead in competition from those who doesn’t. Blogs and social media web sites are gaining importance with customers as they become aware of the existence of such tools, understand their benefits, and use them frequently. For example, according to comScore MediaMetrix, social media web sites, Facebook and MySpace recorded 41 million and 75.1 million, while blogs received 77.7 million unique visitors, respectively, as on August 2008.
Companies can derive multiple benefits in different business functions from such tools. For example, in marketing:
• Leverage these as an effective marketing tool for products and services at a fraction of the cost incurred by using the traditional marketing tools
• Leverage these for brand building
• Target desirable demographic groups, e.g., beauty blogs for promoting or selling cosmetics
In product development or service offerings:
• Analyze end consumer comments on blogs to introduce new product features or rectify any service short comings, e.g., Southwest adjusted its approach to assigned seating and advance scheduling was a direct result of customer feedback on its blog

Further reading:
1. Six ways to make Web 2.0 work
2. Performance Review
3. Web 2.0: Profiting from the Threat