There’s a great article that appeared in the Toronto Globe and Mail over the weekend about business blogging and its corporate value. The article explores some excellent points about the value of blog marketing from the perspective of Jim Estill, a Canadian blogger and the CEO of Synnex Canada, Ltd.

He points out that he started to blog after another company bought out his operation, and he assumed the role of CEO of the combined organization. Many of his new employees didn’t know who he was, so he began to blog as a way to let his employees get to know him.

As in internal communications tool, blogging is very efficient, but Estill also uses the tool to reach his customers directly. In the same way that blogging allowed employees to get to know Estill, blog marketing also allows customers and potential customers to get to know Synnex – in the way that Synnex wants to be known. Estill’s blog receives somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 unique hits per week. He focuses on mostly on work-related subjects like time management and efficiency, but also includes personal posts that aren’t related to work at all.

Blog marketing is a very effective non-traditional tool to reach your potential market, and it allows you to deliver the message you want to send the way you want to send it. Blog marketing also gives your customers the opportunity to provide feedback directly to you. In the article, Estill recalls the decision to close and relocate one of the company’s warehouses, and the amount of negative feedback it generated from readers. The feedback didn’t change the company’s decision, but it did put Estill in direct contact with his critics.

No matter how you do it, blog marketing is an effective way to reach your market and set your organization apart. Estill is quoted in the article as saying,

“I’m probably a better CEO because I blog.”

That’s definitely something to think about if you’re considering blog marketing as an outreach tool.