Media: More and more journalists are subscribing to RSS feeds.
Cutting edge-ness: The blog-savvy clients are still few and far between. Demonstrating that this particular client (through your good services) gets it, is worth its weight in gold. That is, if you/he doesn't f*** it up :)
MS
Darren
· 4 years ago
Blogs can be 'viral'. Say I link to your article about blogs and link to it, first it rank goes up in google, but it means the article has to links on the web. Now someone links to my article about blogs, it spreads. You can't create an ad page on web and get people to link to it for free, but they will do exactly that with a blog.
Kathy Sierra
· 4 years ago
Great list... I'd like to add "addictive". Because they keep changing (ideally every day), readers want their daily "fix". The frequency (and ease) of updates is unique, powerful, and compelling.
Peter Flaschner
· 4 years ago
How about "Increased Sales: by staying in contact with you customer base, you a) can let them know when new products/services come available, b) maintain top of mind awareness, c) build a relationship that will weather the inevitable slip ups.
johntunger
· 4 years ago
1. I'm engaging in an example of "What makes blogs so special" right this minute by commenting in reply to your question: instant feedback from your target audience is a big plus for blogs. But wait! There's more!
2. As people find older entries via search, comments continue over time, giving you an idea as to whether your message (or perception of your message) is changing with time.
(Unless comment spam forces you to close the comments after a time, and presuming that you do read them)
3. Regular readers often engage each other in the comment space, which will often teach you things about your target audience that you might not learn when engaging them directly.
3b. They may also collaborate to solve problems for you, or around your product/idea/focus (hereafter thingie).
4. The social aspect of readers engaging each other can provide a feeling of community centered around your thingie. A feeling of belonging has never hurt a product, to my knowledge.
5. The comments are also a space where you can personally greet, thank or engage each reader who is invested enough to provide feedback in the first place (hint hint). You see this often at gapingvoid, for instance. Providing that feeling of immediacy and accessibility is really key to humanizing your thingie.
6. Having a quasi-permanent, open, social, public record of your thoughts and actions and interactions with others provides people a lot more reason to trust you than a simple mission statement and a paragraph or two on the "history" of your thingie. I say quasi-permanent because obviously you can remove comments or entries, even edit them, but the bulk of your content will either read as authentic or not. The fact remains that a long, open track record is likely to generate trust quicker than boilerplate.
All Comments
Cutting edge-ness: The blog-savvy clients are still few and far between. Demonstrating that this particular client (through your good services) gets it, is worth its weight in gold. That is, if you/he doesn't f*** it up :)
MS
2. As people find older entries via search, comments continue over time, giving you an idea as to whether your message (or perception of your message) is changing with time.
(Unless comment spam forces you to close the comments after a time, and presuming that you do read them)
3. Regular readers often engage each other in the comment space, which will often teach you things about your target audience that you might not learn when engaging them directly.
3b. They may also collaborate to solve problems for you, or around your product/idea/focus (hereafter thingie).
4. The social aspect of readers engaging each other can provide a feeling of community centered around your thingie. A feeling of belonging has never hurt a product, to my knowledge.
5. The comments are also a space where you can personally greet, thank or engage each reader who is invested enough to provide feedback in the first place (hint hint). You see this often at gapingvoid, for instance. Providing that feeling of immediacy and accessibility is really key to humanizing your thingie.
6. Having a quasi-permanent, open, social, public record of your thoughts and actions and interactions with others provides people a lot more reason to trust you than a simple mission statement and a paragraph or two on the "history" of your thingie. I say quasi-permanent because obviously you can remove comments or entries, even edit them, but the bulk of your content will either read as authentic or not. The fact remains that a long, open track record is likely to generate trust quicker than boilerplate.