A recent article in CIO Magazine (Blogging for Fun and Profit) discussed the many opportunities Web logs offer to businesses. One section was devoted to the public relations aspect of blogs, in which Trylon president Lloyd Trufelman defined some of the PR benefits a blog might provide to a business.
First of all, according to Trufelman, since a blog has many contributors (including your customers), valuable market research can be found within the blog. There is now an opportunity to find messages that resonate by seeing what issues your customers are responding to.
Second, media participation in your blog can strengthen and drive valuable media relationships. As the media increasingly uses blogs for information, the opportunities to converse with the media members that have a strong interest in your industry improve.
Third, a blog is an excellent opportunity to float ideas and concepts in front of your community without great expense. The feedback you get can help determine whether or not you want to pursue the concept.
Now that the media consider blogs to be authoritative news sources, effectively using a company blog can keep your company on the media radar screen in a way that press releases simply can't.
Ultimately, using the new technologies such as blogs and interactive Web sites give companies a greater opportunity to interact with the consumer, the media, and other stakeholders much more quickly and intuitively than ever before.