Find a niche for your blog
Blogs seem to be the way to go. Would you recommend it as a business model for me?
Arpita, there are blogs and blogs. You need to pick a space that is unique if you want to make this your business platform.
Blog engagement is big engagement. In an era where customer engagement is getting to be a tough task, blogs become items to focus upon. Bloggers in tech, health, food and even entertainment are much sought after entities. Bloggers add credibility and life to brands in an era where advertising is not trusted as much.
There are many revenue streams for a blogger. It all depends on how much the blogger is willing to ‘compromise’. And ‘compromise’ is the word as bloggers start out as pure content streams and slowly but surely morph into streams that gobble advertising in some manner or the other. Bloggers are, and must be, careful not to convey overt brand commercialisation. That would kill content followership.
The big revenue stream for bloggers are the price tags of paid advertising links. There are bloggers who attract covert payments as well. Payments that just seek that casual, positive mention of the sponsoring brand. To that extent, this is paid blogging.
Why are some established brands, like Murphy, Forhans and Viva, allowed to die? Why are they not acquired by others?
Visakhapatnam
Sharma gaaru , these are big brands names. These were the brand names India and entire generations grew up with. But then, who knows when they will revive?
When sales volumes tank, and the effort to keep the brand going creates losses, organisations give up and pull out their brands. That is exactly what happened to each of these. Some got pushed out by competition, some by habit change, and some because maintaining them became expensive.
Brands go through the stages of launch, dominance, milking and death. At each stage, there is a base target volume. In many ways brands follow the life cycle destined for them by brand activity and consumer craving. One enthuses the other, till a point when the excitement stops all round.
Harish Bijoor is a brand strategy expert and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. Mail your queries to cat.a.lyst@thehindu.co.in