Blogs - Backdoors to the Minds of Clients

Want to get to the inside workings of clients? Try a blog. Oh, sorry - not yours. Theirs.

I just read a story in a publishing trade magazine called Circulation Management. The topic was how many publishers are running blogs on their sites. According to a study, three-quarters of all newspapers run blogs on business-related topics.The Magazine Publishers of America has an online list of 400 blogs of member companies - go there, click on a publication title, and you get a list of at least its top blogs (though possibly not all). Highlight the blog and you see recent post headlines with a first paragraph available by selecting that story. Blogging is also a rapidly increasing trend for many companies that are trying to communicate with their customers.

I'm sure some people think immediately of how this might turn into a regular assignment, and while that might be a possibility, it's actually not the big payoff. What blogs - particularly those written by prominent staffers and top editors - provide is a window into the interests of the publications. You get a real-time clue as to what they think about and what trends they see, by virtue of the content. Forget about only looking at back issues that may or may not represent old editorial regimes or discarded concepts. As things change, you'll see it on a daily or, at worst, weekly basis. Use it well and you'll have a head start to a winning query.