How To Deal With Analysts: #17 Blogs

Nowadays, analysts write blogs. An analyst’s blog provides a window on the individual analyst and it has become a critical aspect of what an analyst does. But writing a blog doesn’t pay you directly. Like me, you can have Google ads on the page and this will generate a few dollars per month, but nothing that comes close to paying for the effort. So what pays for the effort?

1. Direct Publicity

A well managed blog generates publicity. Consider my AVID campaign. I started the campaign about 2 years ago and I never did it in the expectation that it would pay for the effort. And it probably hasn’t, but maybe it has. Since I began the campaign I have been hired twice to write white papers on the topic, twice to do webinars and once to address a gathering of IT users. I’ve also had many interactions with journalists and many security vendors have taken the time to make sure I understand what they are doing and where they are going.

I know that more work will arise from all of this and I’ve become a significant analyst name in IT Security - and that wasn’t previously the case.

2. The Amplifier Effect

Another way of looking at the importance of the blog is what I think of as “the amplifier effect”. AR staff and marketing staff read the analyst blogs. Those that don’t will have Google news links or some other kind of bulletin service that informs them whenever their company is mentioned. So, if I write about BulletResistant Software, the marketing staff at BulletResistant will get to know.

If what I wrote is generally positive, BulletResistant might want to buy the rights to use it as printed collateral (it’s not common but it happens), they will link to it from their web site and they may even quote from it on Powerpoints. Also, BulletResistant’s competitors might want to contact me to persuade me that their products are better and if it’s generally negative the competitors will refer potential customers to it. In general, the marketing people act as amplifiers driving traffic to my blog.

3. The Implicit Advert

The blog showcases my writing skills. This helps to generate white paper work (I’ve been told this directly) because vendors can get an impression of what they will get if they commission me to write something.

4. Product Publicity

Some specific posting on the blog turn out to be product publicity. It’s not intended that way, it just happens. I have a briefing with a vendor and I think it’s important enough to articulate what they are doing and I do so and then the posting just draws traffic. This is particularly the case when I write postings about new technologies or new ideas. I have a number of readers who deliberately come to the blog for that. Postings of that kind currently get between 200 and 1000 hits in a matter of months. That’s quite a large readership and it’s a quality readership. Vendors that get this free publicity boost are inclined to hire me as an analyst.

5. Influence

The blog generates influence. I’ll devote a separate posting on this because it’s a complex topic, but the point is that a blog posting can act like a pebble dropped in a pool. There are ripples that extend outward and they extend outward in ways that are not obvious.

To be continued…

Note: This posting is one in a series of postings that covers the topic of dealing with analysts. Click here for links to other postings in the series.