Crain's
11/12/2007
Dee Gill
It takes most bloggers at least a year to get noticed. It took David Armano two months. His blog, Logic & Emotion (darmano.typepad.com), can be a difficult read for those not familiar with topics like "social media" and "interactive technologies." But the marketing community eats it up. Sponsored by Chicago marketing firm Critical Mass, where he is a vice-president, it ranks 2,200 out of 70 million blogs on the Web.
CRAIN'S: How did you build up traffic so quickly?
MR. ARMANO: I'm a member of a Yahoo Group of people who do the same kind of work, so I talked about it there. I also told people in my LinkedIn network. But the real traction came when I started creating graphics people could use in presentations. I'd take something in my industry, something jargony like "influence ripples," and create a simple graphic explaining it on PDFs so anyone could print it out.
What's the most popular blog entry you've ever posted?
I created a graphic that mapped out how to design Web sites and blogs called the "Experience Map." It got picked up by other blogs and mainstream publications. My hits went up to 1,200 from 200 before.
What did this teach you?
It is the quality of your content that attracts people. Anytime you can create something unique that can be pulled off and used, it's gold.
Do you spend much time talking to people online outside of your blog?
Any company that wants to start a blog has to get involved in other conversations online. I'm active on Twitter (where users exchange short text messages via cell phones and e-mail with selected people). It's a nice way to share a link to something we're all interested in.
It's hard to imagine these things being very helpful to a company hoping to drum up business.
Dell Computers has become a case study in how using this helps improve customer relationships. It developed some sophisticated ways to see what people were saying about it online and responded on a person-to-person basis, mainly on blogs. Media reports said negative blog posts about Dell dropped from 49% to 22%.
How can companies without Dell's IT expertise find out what people are saying about them online?
You can use free tools like Google Blog Search or Google Alerts that show you (via an e-mail with a link) where your company has been named online. Or at Technorati, you can put your URL into their search engine and see who is linking to you.
What's the downside of blogging?
You have to be careful, because this stuff is addictive. You can't let it take over.
