Inexpensive to launch and maintain, blogs can help retailers forge tighter bonds with customers.
By Bill Siwicki
Pet supplies retailer Muttropolis knows animal lovers love viewing and sharing online videos showing the madcap antics of pets. It also knows it needs to foster a tight relationship with customers. So it decided to use the power of online video and social media to accomplish this goal, disseminating entertaining video through its blog.
Last month, Muttropolis introduced blog readers to its new quality control associate, Zazou—a dog with a talent for testing squeaky toys. The video shows the Vizsla supervising a Muttropolis employee squeaking toys. At the end of the test, the employee asks Zazou his opinions, and Zazou communicates his opinions vociferously.
The brief video gives blog readers a few laughs while reinforcing the Muttropolis brand and showing off new products. It also helps make the blog, launched five months ago as part of the Muttropolis Online Dog Park community site, a destination for online shoppers, a source they can rely on for regular posts that entertain with pet stories as well as educate with the latest animal news and tips.
A blog can help retailers create meaningful connections with customers and potential customers, educating and entertaining them, ultimately turning them into regular readers and regular customers, says Janet McCulley, co-founder and chief barketing (yes, barketing) officer at Muttropolis.
“There’s a lot of content out there, and people can Google something they’re looking for. When you create a blog and provide credible, concise, easily digestible information, as well as entertaining items, you’re establishing yourself as an authority people can turn to,” McCulley says. “We make our blog meaningful to pet parents.”
A simple recipe
The recipe some retailers are using to create blogs is simple: One part education, one part entertainment, and just a sprinkling of selling mixed in. Their goal is not to push products or provide hidden (or overt) marketing messages, it’s to become an online destination shoppers routinely visit for ideas, tips, education and fun.
A blog enables interactivity through posts by bloggers and comments by readers. They’re simple to launch because of the numerous free or low-cost blog services on the web that provide easy-to-use templates and all the necessary blogging tools, along with some bells and whistles.
For example, Blogger.com (previously known as Blogspot) is a free offering from Google. And TypePad, from Six Apart Ltd., costs only $98 a year. A retailer can set up a blog in a day, link it to promotional copy on the home page of its e-commerce site, dedicate staff in house to write posts (typically daily), and it’s ready to go.
Retailers successful with blogs tend to be sellers in categories with enthusiastic consumers. Muttropolis has pet parents. Garmin International Inc., another blogging retailer, has technology buffs into GPS navigation and games. And Vans, a brand of VF Corp., has a dedicated cult following of its 42-year-old brand of wildly designed and custom shoes.
Muttropolis has loyal customers in its stores, people who regularly come in to buy food and toys and chat with staff and fellow pet owners about their pets’ latest tricks or fiascos. The retailer wanted to translate this vibe to its e-commerce operation, and it decided the best way to do so was to create a community site that featured a blog.
“People telling stories and sharing information in our stores is a really unique experience,” McCulley says. “The blog gives online customers a snapshot of what the Muttropolis culture is all about.”
Satellite junkies
Garmin’s customers are GPS junkies, the kind who will buy not just navigational devices for their cars or boats but hand-held units to play global-positioning hide-and-seek games, known as geocaching, with fellow enthusiasts around the world. So Garmin launched a blog two years ago to bring these fans together to talk technology and confab about adventures with satellite guidance.
Using TypePad technology and templates and a list of features and functions, it created a small left-hand column divided into sections: a calendar, links to recent posts, search by category, archives, company links, site search and RSS feed subscription. The blogging system automatically generates and places features and functions. The main column displays the posts accompanied by pictures or videos, which staff upload through the blogging system.
Garmin promotes the blog with a link on the home page, blog content integrated into its market pages on the e-commerce site, and e-mail marketing. The blog registered 123,000 unique visitors in July.
Writing one blog post, finding an image or video to accompany it, and posting the item on the blog takes from 30 to 60 minutes, says Kyle Johnston, web and digital creative director at Garmin. Retailer staff members write two to five posts nearly daily. The payoff is generating interest in GPS and Garmin that stimulates shoppers.
“What you get with a blog is more engaged and higher value customers who are likely to click on store links in blog posts,” Johnston says. “If I’m buying a digital camera or GPS device, I’m going to do a lot of research and learn what other people are saying. And if I can see through a blog a lot of positive customer feedback and a company backing up a product with all this additional content, then I’ll be more likely to buy.”
The blog also helps with natural search results, Johnston adds, because of the constantly updated content that attracts search engine spiders.
Creating and promoting
Muttropolis also uses TypePad to create and host its blog. The retailer promotes the blog via a prominent link on the home page, e-mail marketing and in-store kiosks. It also has created a blog profile used by blog search engine Technorati and Google’s blog promotion service FeedBurner, both for free.
McCulley estimates it costs about $500 a month in staff time to maintain the blog. She and a colleague, the company’s marketing manager, write the posts. As with Garmin, the return is highly engaged customers.
“The end game here is building and enhancing brand loyalty,” McCulley says. “The blog is a way to engage customers further and be a resource.”
Shoemaker Vans’ worldwide cult already is highly engaged with the brand. For example, customers give their favorite shirts to the retailer, which turns the shirts into shoes. Artists paint the shoes and resell them. Vans decided in October it was time to create a space where Vans fans around the globe could congregate to see the latest designs and hear others’ shoe stories.
“There’s a strong emotional connection to the brand,” says Doug Palladini, vice president of marketing. “This emotional connection led people to begin posting content online on their MySpace and Facebook pages and on their own blogs.”
So Vans, which keeps an eye on how other bloggers and social networkers are mentioning the brand via social media monitoring services firm Cymfony Inc., picked up the ball its customers had already put into play and ran with it. It uses the Blogger.com free service for its blog.
Marketing coordinator Nikki Scoggins writes the posts. About one-third of her time is spent on the blog—scouring the Internet for consumers’ Vans stories, working with others in the company on product and design news, communicating with customers to get post suggestions and photos, and attending company-sponsored and other events to interview aficionados in the field, where she blogs via iPhone.
Finding bloggers
Palladini placed Scoggins in charge of writing blog posts because he was confident not just in her writing skills but also in her knowledge of the company, its products and its customers.
“The most important thing a retail blogger should have is an intrinsic understanding of why your customers value what you sell,” Palladini says. “That is far and away the most critical part.”
Like Vans, Muttropolis uses its marketing department to manage its blog. And like Palladini, McCulley says retail bloggers must know the brand and its products inside-out. But Muttropolis also plans to go outside the company for some blog posts. It will be asking veterinarians, trainers and holistic pet practitioners it partners with to be guest bloggers.
Whether in house or out, the persons blogging for a retail organization must want to be doing it in the first place, says Johnston of Garmin. “These have to be people who do not see it as a chore but instead as a fun thing to do that’s personal to them on something they’re passionate about,” he says. Garmin found seven volunteers within the organization to routinely blog.
“You would be able to see it on the blog if it came through as drudgery,” says Jake Jacobson, senior media relations specialist and one of the bloggers. “If someone felt it was only part of their job requirements and didn’t have enthusiasm for it, the tone would come through.”
Writing right
What’s exciting for the writers must also be exciting for the readers. The art of crafting an engaging blog post is critical to the success of a retail blog. Garmin, Vans and Muttropolis all say that while blog post subjects must vary, the best are personal.
Garmin, for example, gives some of its bloggers regular features. Peg’s Posts on Fridays gives one Garmin staff member, a tri-athlete, a venue to discuss fitness and sports—and how fitness-related GPS products can help. In addition to talking about her own training and experience with GPS products, she profiles customers and athletes.
“We actually talk to the readers instead of treating them like customers,” Jacobsen says. “We tell stories. There’s usually a product tie-in, like a fitness watch. But because it’s a real person telling their own story, it’s not advertising-speak. It’s coming from someone people can relate to.”
On Mondays the retailer features Ask Garmin, where it lets readers guide content. Readers can e-mail Garmin questions they have about products, previous posts or any subject related to GPS. Garmin blogging staff sorts the questions, judging which would be of greatest interest to a wider audience by identifying themes.
Scoggins at Vans strives to get customer stories on the blog. She asks for input from blog readers, seeks stories from fans on Vans’ MySpace page, scours individuals’ blogs through search engine Technorati, and visits with customers at special events, such as snowboarding competitions. At one event, Scoggins met a young woman who looked like she really could use a new pair of shoes.
“She had the most ratty, beat-up pair of Vans. She said she had them for 10 years and told me this long story about what they meant to her,” Scoggins says. “Then I found out she was an artist and she filled me in on some of the things she was working on. So I had a great story that was a glimpse into the life of an artist and how she has grown up with her one pair of shoes.”
Scoggins adds that pop culture and the Internet itself show that being personal on blogs is key. “When you look at the rise of things like reality TV and social networks,” she says, “you easily see that people like to hear stories about other people.”
Don’t be pushy
Whether it’s an educational post about how people use GPS technology as part of their fitness routines or an entertaining post with an unusual video of dogs and cats in action, retailers with blogs advise not to push products too hard. Including a link to relevant products is fine, they say, but blog readers should not be presented with sales pitches.
“We have an unspoken rule: The blog is not for pimping products. It’s about educating, entertaining and engaging pet parents, our customers,” McCulley says. “When we identify there is a need—increased awareness about allergies with certain foods, what can I do to stop my pets chewing, or behavioral issues—we do a blog post about the issue and mention some available solutions. But the selling is not the gist of our posts.”
Garmin’s Jacobsen wrote a post on how a GPS fitness watch helped with his marathon training, but the focus was on the training, not urging readers to buy the watch.
“You have to write from a user’s perspective, not a seller’s perspective,” he says. “For the fitness watch, I wrote about how I used it in training and how it helps me reach my personal goals as opposed to rattling off the same features you would see in advertising copy.”
Vans agrees, saying it is counterproductive to push products. “We don’t want the blog to be a mouthpiece of the organization. If we try to insert sales or marketing messages, it’s just going to be so obvious. The way to do it is not to do it,” Palladini says. “Take an honest, genuine and entertaining approach and it will lead consumers back to your products. If you do that, the blog will ultimately move product at the end of the day.” l
bill@verticalwebmedia.com
