gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards"

I'm not sure I agree. It depends what your product is. You only have to look as far as Flickr, Gmail and del.icio.us to see examples of generic products whose explosive growth can be partly put down to blogs.

It depends on such things as how expensive your product is to build, how well distribution scales and so on. I work in the software industry, where it's expensive to build the product, but you only have to do it once, and it costs $not much to scale your market to the whole (internet-connected) world. So in software, making it work for as many people as possible is desirable, and your users' blogs are a valuable marketing tool that becomes more powerful the more users you have.

On the other hand, (for example) a bespoke tailor's reputation comes down to the level of individual attention paid to the customer's suit. The ongoing costs of delivering the product are high, and you only want to scale your service to a level where your standards of quality can be maintained.

Blogs are a great marketing tool for customer bases whose markets are tiny or huge, niche or generic. Sure, they level the playing field for small outfits, but that can work no matter how 'niche' the product is.

Blogs are also good for selling blogging products as well, James ;-)

I disagree, at this time. Last night I was looking at some statistics on blog usage, a breakdown of the demographics on LiveJournal - perhaps I should be looking elsewhere, I'd appreciate input - and this is the histogram of the age range. http://www.livejournal.com/stats.bml

The majority of the population is between 15 and 22 - whilst a great avenue of reaching that specific niche in marketing, how many other businesses are not geared towards teenagers?

Hugh does that look like a possible target audience for your services?

niti...think long term....these people do grow up and they will buy bespoke like goods....as they mature, they may be more inclined to give their business to the company that does understand blogging and knows how to communicate with them via a blog strategy. the company that doesn't blog...well, they may be in trouble....

just my opinion.....

jbr: I understand what you're saying, but I'd convert it thus... "establish a relationship with these people, reach out and touch them, and in some way along the way, when they grow up, there will be business"

it's the blogs part I'd be afraid to say. After all, the delta of internet time is such that who is to say it's "blogs" per se that even exist when these youngsters mature. after all, we've seen the PC, the internet, the cellular phone, the camera phone, the wireless connection, ipod etc in the same period of time you're projecting into the future

Narrower AND wider. Larger business concerns will aggregate and collect their blogs. Look at how Microsoft does tech blogs. You can browse blogs.msdn.com and find a wealth of niche technology and product blogs. Or you can go to officezealot.com and get a ridiculously wide sample of tech blogs aggregated.

So, yeah, the atoms remain besoke, but they'll reorganize into a dizzying array of different corporate molecules.

maybe i just read it differently, i didn't think hugh was writing off the value a commodity product can get from blogging...

just stating that the niche product blogs will provide more value-add comparatively - to buyer and seller...

so any "average automobile brand" blog (still good) vs english cut (great - for saville row & thomas)...

I'm old enough to remember when everybody and his dog went out and bought a cb radio. That fad didn't last long.

And no, I don't think blogging itself is a fad that is going to go away, but yes, I do believe that the fad of "I've got to have a blog to be somebody" is going to disappear soon. The number of blogs will peak and then sharply decline. Only "the fittest" shall survive.

dawn, please don't make me go off on the CB thing...i, too, am old enough to have been through the CB time. in my old blog...there is a post about this and trust me, blogs are a totally different beast and are most definitely will not hit a peak, then decline....remember, humans are a social breed and blogs enable that social connection quite well...they also are useful for commerce and that capability is just starting...so, my opinion, blogs are here for a long time...

Niti, i project a long time to be at least 5 - 10 years....9 million blogs are a drop in the bucket when there are hundreds of millions of people with access to the internet....but, i could be wrong...have been wrong before.

Hugh, I agree with you.

I wouldn't even think to compare blogs with CB radios. Have 9 million CBs even been sold yet?

Anyway, I look at it like this. Some of the smartest people in many different fields find enough value in blogging as either a vital part of their overall marketing strategy or at the very least as a way of expressing their views in a more personal manner.

Either way, it's clearly a very influential tool for people who are seeking specific readers. I read marketing blogs (I own an ad agency). I have a friend who works in a totally different field, he reads blogs that relate to him and his business.

Niche blog-marketing. Hmm. I'm going to go with, yes I agree. :)

Tony

Well, without tooting my own horn too much, I think English Cut is a GREAT example of how to use blogs to market effectively.

A $3000 product, a market of about 20K people tops, all of the latter having access to the internet. Even if only 50-100 of them see the site for the first time every day, it adds up quickly. And then you keep adding new material to it, to give it story, and to articulate authority and passion...

Trust me, it works.

But I have another client: $10 product with a target market of millions, sold in supermartkets. I can see how a blog fits in the marketing mix, but really, 99.9% of the selling happens on the supermarket shelf in 3 seconds or less- price, design, shelf space etc.

jbr: in the time frame you mention, yes, then I would agree with you. In fact, I just mentioned to an old client of mine that it's time he launched a blogzone of some kind in India. Flat earth and all that, y'know :P

then we'll see the millions :)