Blogging, a tool in marketing…… The good, the bad.

As a communication medium, blogs represent a significant opportunity to further corporate marketing goals. Consumers often rely on independent opinions in prior-purchase decisions, and often seek out perceived experts through blogs as a reliable source of opinion. Business’ can likewise use the blogs of their suppliers for product information to build relationships. Blogs also offer a new opportunity for corporations to monitor trends and opinions in the marketplace. However misguided or malicious employee blogs have the potential to damage a corporation’s carefully crafted brand. Another harmful effect of blogging to the organization is that customers can voice complaints to the world in an instant as well as experts that can criticize products and corporations which can then influence a potential consumer. Competitors can employ bloggers to attack corporations, or hire bloggers to start negative blog campaigns for no apparent reason, however this is not ethical and can be turned around to hurt the original organization, this information was stated by Joshua et.al. (2008 cited by Millette 2005).