International Law

Blogging and newspapers

Mark Cuban wonders why newspapers have taken to blogging:

... newspapers having "bloggers" is easily one of the many bad decisions that newspapers have made over the past 10 years.

Much of what I am about to say can be considered semantics, but guess what, marketing and branding are all about semantics and perception.

Consider this a rule in marketing that could be added to my Startup Rules.

Never, ever, ever consider something that any literate human being with Internet access can create in under 5 minutes to be a product or service that can in any way differentiate your business.

If you feel that you must offer this product or service as a means of "keeping up" or as a checklist item that you must have for competitive reasons, then do everything possible to brand the product or service in a manner that segregates it from the masses. Perception is reality. If you can leverage your existing brand to create the perception that yours is different from the masses in some meaningful way, then you must do everything you can to do so.

Creating a perceived differentiation can take the form of promoting better execution or quality of the product or service, or it may be something as simple as just branding it with a different name than the mass product or service.

Failure to do so will pull your brand down to that of the masses or elevate the masses to a position of being better able to compete with you.

A blog is a blog is a blog is a blog.

...

When I see content branded as a blog, I'm probably not going there unless its via a link from some other source. If I happen to find my way to a given blog multiple times, Im probably going to subscribe to the RSS feed. Even the, I don't ever consider a blog an authoritative source. I don't ever expect that all sources were confirmed and facts were check. Regardless of who hosts it. That's not a good thing for newspapers. They still have a chance to assign some level of authority to what they produce for their websites and calling it a blog is a huge mistake

Remember, there is TV, and there is HBO. A blog is a blog is a blog.

Read more here.

Full post as published by Freedom to Differ on March 15, 2008 (boomark / email).