Businesses are starting to see that, in order to make what they say and do relevant and valuable for the bottom-line and their (potential) customers, they first of all need to listen to their prospects, customers and communities.

It is not about what we want people to know anymore. It’s about what people want us to know in order to serve them better and provide them what they need.
Moving from monologues to dialogues

This is also going to happen in business blogging that often is still too much about speaking and spreading opinions instead of a genuine two way dialogue whereby listening is the start.

Every year again, it comes as a surprise to see how many businesses still don’t blog. To me it means that the business mindset, whereby interaction is built into the direct and indirect contact moments between these businesses and their customers in the broadest sense, is missing.

Many brands and organizations are still afraid of humanizing their interactions and communications.

And thus we remain in a monologue situation, even on many blogs. This is strengthened by a strong focus on the blog as a medium and of how we still tend to have a view on communication as “we speak and you listen”. What has been added with blogging is “and you may respond”. But is that really enough? Can’t we move beyond that simple model?

The interesting thing is that, with the increasing understanding that everything in the process of value creation starts with listening, businesses finally start understanding the value of blogs: they are ideal ways of involving and getting involved, engage in more direct interactions and understand what people want.

This can obviously also be done via social media monitoring, etc. but having an own interaction environment, which is what a blog in a way is, adds so much more value.

When we add the community spirit, this value even becomes more important.

A community-driven and multi-channel experience

Blogs are still the hubs of a social media world that allow a business to offer value (content has become an asset instead of a commodity) and tap into the wisdom of communities, while identifying influencers and potential customers in those communities.

Organizations will understand that a good blog plays a key role in community marketing. They will understand that much larger communities exist around blogs than only the micro-communities that express themselves openly and are visible, yet only the tip of the iceberg.

The vast majority of a blog community is invisible but that doesn’t make it less interesting. Recently I noticed a tweet by someone I had never heard of, saying that he waited for every tweet I sent. Since my tweets are often blog-related, this means that this person for one or the other reason used another platform (Twitter) to say in just a few words how good he thought the value of our blogs was. You have to listen across all relevant channels to hear this.

And for businesses that are blogging this is a challenge: integrating your blog with new ways of interaction and further identifying the members of your communities. The ultimate goal must be to identify need segments and serve the best content for the various types of readers, the channels they prefer, etc.

Blogs are going to become a mainstream part of an integrated, community-driven and multi-channel approach to gather intelligence about our communities and, based upon that, providing value.

It’s not about the media, the channels, the formats etc. It’s about the holistic experience. It’s integrated.

The collaborative maturing of ideas through the blog ecosystem

Of course, the traditional benefits of blogging as we all have learned them still stand: blogs make us found (SEO, etc.), they show the human beings that are our companies, they enable human dialogue, they are social media hubs etc.

On top of that, so many people are now used to reading and visiting blogs, that it has become part of their digital lifestyle and even media consumption, making blogs an inevitable part of the content marketing mix.

But most of all: blogs are places to unleash ideas, have people’s feedback, start intelligent discussions and continue them all over the online space, involving people and communities.

Blogs will move away from the monologues they still are to think tanks and dialogues in the true sense of the word with the most active members of our business ecosystems.

Blogs are great to provide valuable content. They are great to gain valuable insights.

But they really become great when the “we” and “them” dissolve and grow into something new and collaborative. When ideas spread, get shared and are grown in a collaborative spirit.

Great thoughts can be shared on blogs. But they become so much greater, when they mature across the blog’s ecosystem and grow into a community experience.