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« How Much Tax Money Is Being Spent on the "Privately Funded" Renovation of the Governor's Mansion? | Main | Open Meetings Law Update » November 11, 2007Bootstrap BloggingJeff Cornwall's column in the Sunday Tennessean looks at the value of blogging as a marketing tool for small business. Blogging has become a popular tool for bootstrap marketing. One recent survey found that 10 percent of small businesses were using or planning to use blogs for their businesses. Blogging allows for a highly targeted, personal contact with a customer base. If done properly, it can build strong customer loyalty.It may not have been his original motive, but creating a great marketing tool for his entrepreneurship program was my motive when I, then working for Belmont, approached Jeff about starting his blog. Dr. Cornwall had been hired to start a new entrepreneurship program within the school's College of Business, and we created his blog, called The Entrepreneurial Mind, before entrepreneurship was officially a major at the school. Because the school's entrepreneurship program was new there was no track record upon which to build a marketing plan - and no money for a big marketing push, either. The blog solved both problems. It was free to do, requiring only an investment of Dr. Cornwall's time. And it gave us a way to market the program by marketing the person - Dr. Cornwall - at its core. Through the blog, Dr. Cornwall became the public image and personality of the entrepreneurship program, and also a go-to source for local and national business media, as he mentioned in his column today: Blogging can be a good public relations tool, too. It can set you apart as an expert in your field, which can lead reporters to your site when looking for content for their articles. It is likely that I would never have been called for interviews by The Wall Street Journal, Business Week or U.S. News & World Report had I not been a blogger. When they did web searches for stories they were working on, my blog came up.Blogging also led to Dr. Cornwall being quoted frequently in various local business media, and even to his having a column every other Sunday in the Tennessean business section. It was an entrepreneurial move on Cornwall's part to agree to write a blog, a real up-by-the-bootstraps decision, and it has paid off as the blog is, without a doubt, the single most cost-effective marketing tool that the program (and Belmont) has. Posted in Blogging
Comments
Great article Bill. I edited it a bit to make more readable and put it on my website. Thanks again. Posted by: Shawn A. Hessinger at November 16, 2007 8:23 PMPost a comment
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