Consumer Generated Media (CGM) is making it’s mark in the online blogging world. Many companies are now using blogs and online forums and email marketing to help create brand awareness and a buzz about their new products. The use of blogs has created a growth in the number of people creating their own blogs. Some examples of CGM would include blog entries, consumer email feedback, message board posts, forum comments, websites, and consumer generated email. The great thing about CGM is that it leaves a digital fingerprint and can really help a large company or even a small upstart create Brand equity. This avenue for marketing has also created a division among those who write on major blogs as to whether this creates a conflict of interest and does paying other to write about your product influence their opinion.
Some of the highly read blogs will use customer survey tools to help interact and gain feedback from their readers as well. This adds another dimension to help find out what your customers are wanting to hear about and then making sure that your blog is meeting those expectations. As their readers grow so will their RSS feeds which is what people will sign up for in order to receive daily or weekly feeds about site updates. The blog owners can then create an email campaign that will target those users and then be able to create more interest and buzz for their site. They can then highlight other bloggers or advertisers in their campaigns to grow their revenue which can be used to reinvest back into the site to increase their search and marketing position.
