Impact of Blogging on Business

To: Mark Anderson

From: Nikita Patel

Date: 02 June, 2014

Subject: Impact of blogging on Business - Memorandum

Mark,

As per the discussion last week, I performed a research on the impact that blogging can have on our Fixed Income (FI) business. To keep up-to-date with today’s ever changing environment, there is a need to engage & understand the business trends from every perspective. Companies that blog have inbound links which is important for search engine optimization as blog articles provide linkable connection. As we work on the business side, we should have a deep understanding of how exactly connection works on a technical level, and leverage that expertise to make seamless connection to information and people. Ultimately, such connectivity makes everyone more productive; a good thing for any company’s bottom line. We being a large financial service institution have a corporate blog where different units have their blogs on landing page. As we have the infrastructure built in place, I recommend that the FI division have a footprint on our corporate blog as it will generate an informal environment by influencing the users & result in building a strong clientele & increase the individual customer base leading us to an 18% growth in the FI business by the end of next year 2015.

The target demographic group for our business investing in the mutual fund is 21-40 years old who are active in blogging, professional & social networking sites, hence creating a blog will in turn connect to the relevant audience. Today, investors in business use different search engines to learn more about the product or services available at a company. Reading the reviews and feedback available all over the internet helps the user arrive at a right decision. Blogging has been advertised by marketers as a powerful business marketing tool as it serves as a potential cost savings when compared with traditional marketing. The direct impact of this cost savings can contribute approx. 12% in growth for our FI business.There are many other significant benefits of blogging like a) building trust with clients and prospective clients which takes couple of years however cannot be quantified in percentage terms, b) establishing an open communication channel with the customers & c) ultimately positioning your company as an industry ‘Thought leader’. 

Let me share an example that illustrates how blogging has achieved results within our ‘Equity’ division who started their blog four years back on our corporate blog. They have reduced the traditional marketing and moved to blogging as a marketing tool which lead to an increase of 22% in growth in the last 4 years. Not only the traditional marketing costs have reduced but they have also built a strong clientele & increased the customer base over the years and currently have a growth of 30% for their division. The productivity among the employees within the division has increased due to an ongoing interaction between different verticals within the company. Though blogging has its downsides which include sharing of confidential information about the company, it can be controlled by putting additional firewalls within the security system. Considering the many positive impacts as stated above, the suggested course of action is to start having a footprint on blogging keeping in mind that the discussions passed around on the blog can be beneficial to a reader, however it doesn’t really mean an end to believing in the content by the user; rather it creates a curious sense to research more about the subject which leads the end user to a more learned decision making.