connection between branding and bloggers

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“wat do u feel about the connection between branding and bloggers? I am preparing a write up…so need your take on this topic…..” (Answering it as a blogger and a brand manager handling over 10 brands)

Remember my presentation about blogs http://www.seoforclients.com/blog/misc/kolkata-bloggers-meet-webreps.html

“The word blog is irrelevant, whatâ€™s important is that it is now common, and will soon be expected, that every intelligent person (and quite a few unintelligent ones) will have a media platform where they share what they care about with the world”

World is changing, customer is very powerful now with a big mouth

We bought 2 lenevo computers 3000 G430 and both of it is flickering. I haven’t spread it across to many but just few fellow members at CCD and they are facing the same problem. Now I will be making others aware about this problem with Lenovo computers through this blog post. Nobody (people whom I talked with) is recommending Lenovo to me, I am stopping people from buying lenovo. After this post there will be over 2000 people who will be aware of it (who follow this blog) and if each are influencing 100 on an average, it becomes 2000 * 100 = 2,00,000 and it will just grow. Now you can understand how powerful one customer can be. If Lenovo takes care of this problem and explains it on their website and ask other bloggers to explain the problem then the problem can be corrected the same way it was created across the web. I get over 100 visitors for SBI Mutual fund and I am expressing my opinion about their online mistakes. Sadly, they have no time to answer a blogger (which can be dangerous in long run).

Now this is one type of blogging. Now people are doing the same message spreading across Facebook, Facebook needs to be watched more carefully than blogs as the communication is much simpler there.

Why Bloggers are considered a special group from branding perspective

As mentioned in Tipping point, “The Law of the Few”, or, as Gladwell states, “The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts. According to Gladwell, economists call this the “80/20 Principle, which is the idea that in any situation roughly 80 percent of the ‘work’ will be done by 20 percent of the participants.” Bloggers certainly belong to the 20% when it comes to spreading the word about new ventures, brands.

Connectors are the people who “link us up with the world … people with a special gift for bringing the world together.” They are “a handful of people with a truly extraordinary knack [... for] making friends and acquaintances”. He characterizes these individuals as having social networks of over one hundred people. Aren’t we all connects now, check our Facebooks. Mavens are “information specialists”, or “people we rely upon to connect us with new information.” They accumulate knowledge, especially about the marketplace, and know how to share it with others. Salesmen are “persuaders”, charismatic people with powerful negotiation skills. They tend to have an indefinable trait that goes beyond what they say, which makes others want to agree with them.

According to me bloggers are the species who are connectors, mavens and salesmen at the same time, so they contribute significantly to brand and branding.