The real value of retailer blogs
USAToday featured retailers that blog yesterday but missed the point of why this is such a big deal. It’s the RSS feed, stupid! The article looks only at the direct connection between retailer and consumer for providing news and information.
For instance Bluefly.com, an online retailer of designer clothes, updates customers on fashion-related news through its blog Flypaper (flypaper.bluefly.com).The blog “encourages them to visit often to check postings on styles, designers and fashion faux pas,” says Melissa Payner-Gregor, CEO of Bluefly.com. The company’s fashion spotters around the country post items on Flypaper, which launched in April.
Flypaper’s customers typically have relied for fashion news on magazines such as Vogue. Now, they also have the blog as an information source, and the company has an opportunity for an interactive relationship.
I’m not saying this isn’t important, but the real value of retailers using blog technology is its ability to ping and deliver RSS, and I’m convinced that aggregating retail feeds will be a big profit center for somebody. For retailers and their agencies, it’s a real-time way to specifically target retail focus and to turn on a dime. This is new in the advertising firmament, and it’s going to be huge.
August 25th, 2005 at 10:50 am
We have been playing with blogging at our retail store Platos Closet of Cool Springs for a while. We eventually moved our entire website over to a blog system (though not all pages are bloggy).
I just wish I had more time to focus on it. We are not getting as much out of it as we could, but I do think it is a step in the right direction. Once we can get to a place where we are updating daily (or close to it) then I think that we will see a much bigger impact.