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Blogging is the newest marketing media and is becoming a real topic of conversation among marketers. Although we could not find an appropriate mobile blogging program in market for testing, we thought we would explore the topic with MYIQ.

What Is It?
Simply put, a blog is a digital soapbox—a place to type out entries that promote opinions, or just keep people up to date on what is going on. You usually create one through websites such as blogger.com, LiveJournal, Xanga, and TextAmerica.

A newer form of blogging, mobile blogging or “mblogging” has emerged as a by-product of the camera phone. Mbloggers can send pictures or video to an email or short code where their friends can view what is happening at that moment in their lives.

From the View of MYIQ
From the members on our panel that do blog, many just write about their lives and aspects of it such as stress, heartbreaks, friends, and experiences at school.

“How I’m feeling, random deep thoughts, venting about things that bother me…that type of thing,” explained a MYIQ panelist.

Mblogging offers a way for consumers to share their thoughts, but panelists tell us that the two types of blogging are a bit different.

“I do use them differently. For the mobileblog I just post pictures and maybe add a few lines of text to explain what was going on. My web blog also has pictures posted but I use more like a daily journal”

“mobile blogging would be very short and more likely to be random quotes or inside jokes only,” texted a panelist.

Blogging and mblogging began as a peer-to-peer phenomenon but has started to enter the marketing world. The idea of a direct relationship with a brand through mblogging was something that many members of the panel were open to. They were intrigued by the idea of brands using blogs to keep them posted on new lines of products or upcoming sales and promotions.

Learning
Unlike other media vehicles, blog use, whether corporate or personal, allows the consumer to be in complete control of the content. Mblogs can be used as a form of viral marketing, because they allow consumers to immediately share pictures, audio, or text on what is happening in their everyday lives.

In future issues of MYIQ we’ll report on how brands start to leverage this behavior.

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