As a marketing tool, blogs offer some advantages. They can offer a fresh, original, personal, and cheap way to enter into consumer Web conversations. However, the blogosphere is cluttered and difficult to control. Blogs remain largely a C-to-C medium. Although companies can sometimes leverage blogs to engage in meaningful customer relationships, consumers remain largely in control.
Whether or not they actively participate in the blogosphere, companies should show up, monitor, and listen to them. For example, Starbucks sponsors its own blog (www .MyStarbucksIdea.com) but also closely follows consumer dialogue on the 30 or more other third-party online sites devoted to the brand. It then uses the customer insights it gains from all these proprietary and third party blogs to adjust its marketing programs.
In all, C-to-C means that online buyers don’t just consume product information— increasingly, they create it. As a result, “word of Web” is joining “word of mouth” as an important buying influence.