The Force 5 Connection

Here at Force 5 Media, we see the blogging movement picking up speed as businesses begin to realize the benefits of blogging.

• The boom of weblogs (blogs…) happened in 1999 when several companies & developers made easy blogging software and tools. Since 1999, the number of blogs on the Internet has exploded from a few thousand to over 100 million. Universal McCann Research shows it like this (for 2008):
  • 184 million WW have started a blog | 26.4 US
  • 346 million WW read blogs | 60.3 US
  • 77% of active Internet users read blogs

When 77% of active internet users read blogs, you should take notice!

Blogs can fall into two general categories:

Personal Blogs: a mixture of a personal diary, opinion posts and research links.

Business Blogs: a corporate tool for communicating with customers or employees to share knowledge and expertise.

Business blogs are sweeping the business community. Blogs are an excellent method to share a company’s expertise, build additional web traffic, and connect with potential customers. It also allows the company to personally connect with consumers, head off any potential negative press, and establish the corporate culture better than ever before.

What does Blogging Provide to Small Business?

• It’s easy to use. Simply write your thoughts, link to resources, and publish to your blog, all at the push of a few buttons. Blog software companies such as: Movable Type, Blogger.com. WordPress and Typepad all offer easy blogging tools to get started. We use WordPress here at Force 5 Media.
• It allows for a constant and fresh presence on the web. We recommend to our clients that each blogger in the company post something new at least once a week.
• It provides your small business with a chance to share your expertise and knowledge with a larger audience. It humanizes the company, showing the consumer the knowledge base that is inherent with every company.
• There are minimal costs with a blog from a start up and hosting perspective, but be careful if every employee is blogging daily—you’re productivity rate may suffer.

Some of our clients have asked us to prepare a “Best Practices” blogging policy for them. We’re working on that now, and I’ll have some examples of that in a future blog.

We’re starting our own blogs at Force 5 Media, and have asked our employees to participate. It should be fun. We have great people with great skill sets, and passion for many things. We look forward to having them share their expertise with you, and write about things they are passionate about. From design and animation, programming and marketing strategy, the topics will be interesting. Our company specializes in marketing communications, and we hope to share with you some of our experience in the field of advertising and marketing.