Jason Billingsley of the Get Elastic blog recorded this interview with Darren Tomey, VP of Sales from Compendium Blogware, at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition 2008 in Chicago.
I find it interesting that Darren uses organic SEO as the rationale for why big retailers should be blogging. I don’t disagree, but my first reaction would have been to say that retailers should blog in order to build communities.
Then again, if you do build a community around your blog, I suppose the SEO boost naturally follows (you’ve probably heard that search engines love blogs) and you end up in the same place anyway. So, not only is Darren correct, but he cuts to the chase and presents an argument that is more compelling to retailers, who are notoriously numbers oriented.
Incidentally, Connie Benson describes a conversation between her, Lee Odden, Albert Maruggi and Barry Judge about community building and SEO. Connie brings up a good question: If you engage in online community building (which could include blogging among other activities) with SEO in mind, should you make deliberate use of SEO keywords, which might result in stilted and possibly off-putting language? Or do you write au naturel? She seems to come down in favor of the latter and I have to agree.
December 31st, 2008 at 11:41 am
Hi Don,
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I think that the corporate world prefers the term SEO. It sounds more ‘official’ rather than ‘community building’ which has warm fuzzy connotations. There have already been predictions that the SEO practices of the past are going to blur into the natural practices now. And it’s ironic that the continually changing search algorithms will force that. But they smile upon the organic content building. In the end community building will be important (even if it’s called organic SEO practices
January 2nd, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Good and encouraging points, Connie.
Another reason for blogging just occurred to me: to have a ready platform for crisis management. Do you remember the tomato scare last summer? At the time, I remember wondering if tomatoes from Bushel Boy, a Minnesota-based greenhouse tomato grower, were safe to eat. So I went to their site. Not a word about the safety of their tomatoes, their growing and inspection processes, etc. It seemed to me that a blog would’ve been the ideal platform in which to not only tell people that their tomatoes were safe, but to actually show people, with photos, videos, etc.
Of course, big retailers face the same issues, and frequently have to cope with lawsuits (Walmart), recalls (Best Buy) and product safety scares (Toys R Us).