Business Blogging and the U.S. Retail Industry - Finding Customers and Markets

Social Networks Helps Businesses Bypass Traditional Mass Media to Build Brands

While some members of the U.S. are baffled by the online world of social media, a select few retailers are discovering that successful navigation in social networks can help them build their brand, find customers, and reach new markets without the help or cooperation of traditional mass media. As more people turn their attention towards the internet, businesses are working hard to catch up to the future with social networking tools like bizblogging.

"I'd rather have a million friends right now than a million dollars. Your social equity is far greater than your financial equity." That is the philosophy of a man who built a $40 million brick and mortar retail business in seven years, and then elevated himself to iconic status on the internet in 14 months.

If you’ve heard of Gary Vaynerchuk, you can’t forget you know the name. If you’ve seen Vaynerchuk on a speaking platform, you can’t forget you’ve had the experience. Even if you try to forget, he will haunt you in your dreams. Vaynerchuk has built a cult-like following for himself online and has become a cyberspace celebrity largely because he brings Katrina-sized energy with him wherever he goes.

The founder of Wine Library TV, Vaynerchuk was one of the keynote speakers at a recent BlogWorld & New Media Expo which was was attended by bloggers, vloggers, milbloggers, mobloggers, photobloggers, podcasters, RSS feeders, internet TV broadcasters, social media experts, and all other kinds of new media producers. To most of us from the baby boom generation, what that last sentence means is "yadda yadda bling blog." Why would anyone working in the retail industry care about any of that virtual noise?

Blogging is one of those things which has inserted itself into American culture whether we like it or not. According to the BlogWorld site, of the 147 million Americans who use the internet, almost 40% of them read blogs. In fact, more than twenty of the 100 most popular websites in the world are blogging sites.

Unfortunately for the retail industry, only two retail companies own any of the top 100 blog sites. Not surprisingly, those two companies are e-commerce retailers and . The rest of the retail industry is missing out by not making a concerted effort to connect with the worldwide blogging community. Reportedly blog readers spend an average of 23 hours online each week, and 51% of them shop online. These are the kind of people that every retailer should want to meet and befriend.

Like it or not, retailers who want to find where their shoppers are hiding these days need to start looking... ...