WASHINGTON, June 13 (UPI) -- Marketing consultant John Jantsch has created what he calls the world's first blog channel, combining nine separate Web logs on his ducttapemarketing.com site.
Jantsch, the founder of Duct Tape Marketing in Kansas City, Mo., developed a site that provides links for each of the channels, with each focusing on different aspects of the small-business world. Each channel is a distinct blog authored by a small-business owner.
With topics ranging from conducting business with large corporations to customer relations, the Duct Tape site provides a centralized location for small-business tips and information, with the added benefit of Web exposure for the bloggers themselves.
"A blog is a great way to aggregate all marketing tools," Jantsch told United Press International.
"My blog serves as a marketing tool for me and as a tool for me to use with clients, all of whom have blogs now," he added.
Technologies such as Rich Site Summary allows users to keep track of new content from many Web sites in a centralized location, makes reading blogs more efficient. Jantsch said the automatic updating of RSS is essential to establishing loyal blog readership, so he has made various RSS subscription formats available on the site, including XML, Yahoo! and Microsoft Network.
In order to access the Web content gathered by RSS, site owners must install a computer program able to process user requests in an appropriate format.
Jantsch said he thinks blogs will become the next mainstream marketing tool, a status blogs already have achieved in other areas such as politics.
Surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center showed domestic blog readership boasted a 58-percent increase during the period of February through October 2004. As of last November 32 million people in the United States were visiting blogs. Furthermore, 42 percent of those readers live in households with annual incomes of at least $50,000, the surveys found.
Eager eyes with money to spend abound, and Jantsch thinks small businesses will want in, which is why he said he feels optimistic about the marketing potential of his Duct Tape blog.
"In the next eight to 12 months, traffic will triple," he predicted.
Dan Janal, who writes for the public-relations channel on the Duct Tape blog, is relying on a large audience to promote his own business, called PR Leads, while providing his own insights to other small-business owners. He said in the marketing world before blogs it was difficult for companies to present their messages to the public without the media presenting an opposing viewpoint for the sake of fairness.
"With the introduction (of blogs), people are able to reach a direct audience," he told UPI.
Janal said he thinks more small businesses are turning to blogs because they allow companies to advertise without using the "gatekeeper" media.
For Jan Myers, a small-business executive, the greatest appeal of blogs lies in their novelty.
"Blogging has a huge interest factor right now," Myers told UPI. To her, this fact makes using blogs as a marketing tool a smart move.
Myers, who is executive vice president of MLS Broker Connection of Colleyville, Texas, said she thinks the use of blogs for marketing helps small businesses establish credibility with potential and existing customers.
"There's so much competition that you need a way to set yourself apart," and, in this respect, Myers said, a blog "has been critical."
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Renee Williams is an intern for UPI Science News. E-mail: [email protected]
