Increased use of blogs as an E-Marketing tool in Tanzania

By: Gabriel Bakilana

October 2008
Introduction

Meaning:

The word BLOG comes from the joining of two words, “Web” and “Log”, or “Web
Log”. A blog is essentially a website which is maintained by an individual (called
the Moderator or Administrator) aimed at allowing the visitors to the website
(called Bloggers) to read the material posted online, and comment on them. The
word “blog” could also be used as a verb, to describe the act of adding
comments onto a blog.

Features of a Blog:

Blogs usually post entries about various areas of interest to bloggers, such as
sports, jokes, entertainment, and politics. They sometimes act as personal online
diaries. The Moderator gets regular commentary, or other material such as
pictures, graphics, music or video. These are uploaded to the blog using specal
features created by the designers of the blog. A blog must be dynamic (a website
backed up by a database to hold such material and graphics).

A typical blog combines text, images or photos, and links to other blogs, web
pages, and other media related to its main topic. The ability for readers to leave
comments in an interactive format is an important part of any blog.

Types of Blogs:
Most blogs are primarily textual, but some combine other art-forms (artblog),
photographs (photoblog), sketches (sketchblog), videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog),
audio (podcasting), which are part of a wider network of social media.

There are many different types of blogs, classified according to:

- The type of content (Personal Blogs, Corporae Blogs, Question Blogs)
- The way that content is delivered or written, i.e:
o By media Type
o By Device
 o By Genre
Personal Blogs
The personal blog is typically an online diary. It is an ongoing diary or
commentary by an individual, is the traditional, most common blog. Personal
bloggers usually take pride in their blog posts, even if their blog is never read by
anyone but them. Blogs often become more than a way to just communicate;
they become a way to reflect on life or works of art. Blogging can have a
sentimental quality. Few personal blogs rise to fame and the mainstream, but
some personal blogs quickly garner an extensive following. A type of personal
blog is referred to as "microblogging," which is extremely detailed blogging as it
seeks to capture a moment in time. Sites, such as Twitter, allow bloggers to
share thoughts and feelings instantaneously with friends and family and is much
faster than e-mailing or writing. This form of social media lends to an online
generation already too busy to keep in touch.

Corporate Blogs

A blog can also be used for Corporate purposes. In this case, blogs are designed
for business purposes. They are ocassionally used, either internally to enhance
the communication and culture within a corporation or externally for marketing,
branding or public relations purposes.

Question Blogs

This is a type of blog that answers various questions on various topics.

Questions can be submitted in the form of a submittal form, or through email or
other means such as telephone or SMS. Qlogs, as they are popularly known, can
be used to display shownotes from podcasts or the means of conveying
information through the internet. Many question logs use syndication such as
RSS as a means of conveying answers to questions.
Classification by Media Type

A blog comprising videos is called a vlog, one comprising links is called a linklog,
a site containing a portfolio of sketches is called a sketchblog or one comprising
photos is called a photoblog. Blogs with shorter posts and mixed media types are
called tumblelogs.

Classification by Device

Blogs can also be defined by which type of device is used to compose it. A blog
written by a mobile device like a mobile phone or PDA could be called a moblog.
One early blog was Wearable Wireless Webcam, an online shared diary of a
person's personal life combining text, video, and pictures transmitted live from a
wearable computer and EyeTap device to a web site. This practice of semi-
automated blogging with live video together with text was referred to as
sousveillance. Such journals have been used as evidence in legal matters.

Classification by Genre

Some blogs focus on a particular subject, such as political blogs, travel blogs,
house blogs, fashion blogs, project blogs, education blogs, niche blogs, classical
music blogs, quizzing blogs and legal blogs (often referred to as a blawgs) or
dreamlogs. While not a legitimate type of blog, one used for the sole purpose of
spamming is known as a Splog.

History of Blogs and Blogging:

Blogs and blogging has only recently become popular. This is because they have
come about, primarily, as a result of development in information and
communication technology, and also as a result of growth in freedom of
expression and electronic media communication access and distribution,
increase in people’s interest in world affairs and internatioal location of people
who need to communicate on matters of common interest to them.
Origin of the word “blog”

Jorn Barger used the word "weblog" for the first time on 17 December 1997.
Another person, Peter Merholz, jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase
“we blog” in the sidebar of his blog peterme.com in April 1999. Later, Evan
Williams at Pyra Labs started using the word "blog" as both a noun and verb; "to
blog" referring to the act of editing one's weblog or to post material onto one's
weblog. As a result, the word "blogger" came into existence in connection with
Pyra Labs' Blogger product, leading to the wide popularization of the words.

Emerging Popularity of Blogs in Tanzania:

Up to around December 2007, one blog search engine called Technorati was,
on average, tracking down more than 112 million blogs. With the advent of video
blogging, the word blog has taken on an even looser meaning - that of any bit of
media wherein the subject expresses his opinion or simply talks about
something.

Before blogging became popular, digital communities took many forms, including
Usenet, commercial online services such as Genie, BiX and the early
CompuServe, e-mail lists and Bulletin Board System (BBS). In the 1990s,
Internet forum software, such as WebEx, created running conversations with
"threads", which are topical connections between messages on a metaphorical
"corkboard".

Over the years, researchers have analyzed the dynamics of how blogs become
popular. There are essentially two ways in which blogs have become popular, not
just in Tanzania, but worldwide. These are:
  popularity through citations (i.e. permalinks): When credible, famous
or popular people cite a source of certain information as being a certain
blog, then others become more interested in it and actually visit the blog.
 popularity through affiliation (i.e. blogrolls): Some sites can be
affiliated, and have hyperlinks to other similar or related blogs. Blogger in
one site can move on to visit another site, even without knowing its
content or credibility.

Permalinks can boost popularity more quickly, and are perhaps more indicative
of popularity and authority than blogrolls, since they denote that people are
actually reading the blog's content and deem it valuable or noteworthy in specific
cases.

Advantages of Blogs:

The popularity of blogs has risen due to many reasons, some of these
advantages are: -
 Their increasing acceptance as sources of news/information by
people and mass media: many media houses, e.g. Habari Corporation
and IPP Media use blogs as sources of news and events, some of which
come out of blogs first before they appear on print media.
 Blogs allow interaction and opinion sharing: Popularity of blogs has
risen due to their ability of providing a forum for trapping opinion on
different matters globally as well as locally. People use blogs as a rendez-
vous, a virtual meeting place, and talk of different issues such as politics,
economic matters, science and technology, etc.
 Ease of access: Anyne can access blogs, although some are accesses
by members only. In many cases membership signup to these blogs is
free. In this case, anyone with web access can blog.
  Can reach the world: Blogs know no borders, they can reach anyone
located anywhere in the world, as long as that person is connecten to the
internet.
 A means of applying pressure for action (e.g. on political, economic,
social matters): In Tanzania, information first started to spread on
Kiswahili-based email-lists and blogs on matters concerning the theft of
Billions of Shillings from the Bank of Tanzania’s External Payment
Account (EPA). The circulation of this information and documentary proof,
which was from an unnonimous source, got in the hands of some
Parliamentarians who put pressure for further investigation. From the
investigations, the information turned out to be true, and the Government
has taken some action.
 You can say it in your own words: Blogs allow the contributor/ blogger
to speak his/her mind. They allow the person to use the language they
like, and express themselves as hey wish. But in most cases, there is a
moderator who has access and technical authorisation to edit or disallow
some posts which he/she finds inappropriate, or provocative.
 Enables online Advertising: Some blogs, as a result of their popularity,
good reputation, integrity and acceptability, have started attracting
advertisers of various products to place their ads online.

Disadvantages of Blogs:
- Blogs are said to be very addictive: Once you start blogging, it draws
you to it and time keeps running. That’s an experience of many bloggers,
who have said that blogging is indeed very addictive. A few bloggers can
control themselves, and spend only theplanned time on blogging.
- Can result into misuse of labour time (for addicted employees):
Addicted employees can mismanage their working hours if they succumb
to blogging during working hours. As a measure, some offices preer not to
have internet connection for their staff, or limit it to seniors only, or even to
have just an intranet (an Internal network communication system).
 - Available to a few: In Tanzania, relatively, only a few are actually
connected to the internet, and relatively very few are computer literate
since blogging requires internet connection and computer literacy.
- Internet connection still very expensive in Tanzania: The costs are
very high, and most people cannot afford. Current initial Internet
connection costs about TShs. 200,000 (roughly abut US$ 160), and
further costs depend on usage.
- No regulations for blogging yet, some are misused: So far, our laws
do not accommodate online associations of people, e.g. online contract
formation, and internet crimes cannot be adequately addressed by these
laws. Special provisions still need to be added to our laws so as to
adequately cover online associations of persons.
- Freedom of speech is not absolute: Most bloggers use “cover names”,
this is because they are still afraid that they will be traced down, identified,
and taken to task for whatever they say or publish online.

A Blog as a Marketing Tool:

Blogs have emerged due to advancement of Information and communication
technology, particularly the field of web-designing. Previously, website designers
used designing programmes which required advanced programming language
skills. With development of user friendly design programmes, such instant
updates to a website has been made possible.

It is common for blogs to feature advertisements either to financially benefit the

blogger or to promote the blogger's favorite causes. The popularity of blogs has
also given rise to "fake blogs" in which a company will create a fictional blog as a
marketing tool to promote a product. Discussions on this fact are highlighted
herein under the heading “Blogs and Marketing intelligence”.

Blogging comes, at these times, as an opportunity for, both, marketers within

organisations as well as marketing agencies which take marketing as their
income generating business. They are also effectively used in “personal
marketing”, “marketing intelligence” and they can be used effectively to influence
sales through “opinion leadership”.
A Business Opportunity for Marketing Agencies:

Some organizations or people start blogs as income generating projects.

Through these, moderators or owners of the blogs can charge subscription for
membership. Another source of revenue is the payment for the download of
posted material such as articles, music, videos, or pictures.

Marketing agencies can use blogs to showcase goods produced by others and
give out information about certain services offered by their customers. This
happens in a similar way as the “Yellow Pages”, the only difference is that this
one is not on paper but online. In exchange for such publicity, advertisers pay for
the blog ad space.

Blog owners can even sell advertising slots/space. In Tanzania, one of the most
famous blogs is www.issamichuzi.blogspot.com. Muhidin Issa Michuzi, who is
one of the most respected and celebrated journalist in Tanzania is the owner; he
offers advertising space in his blog, and at the moment companies like the
Tanzania Breweries Company TBL) and Vodacom (T) Ltd. have taken this
opportunity and placed their ads in Michuzi’s blog.

In other cases, blog owners can sell the space for a hyperlink to their official
sites. If you have your official site, then you can place a link onto a popular blog,
and the bloggers come to visit your official site once they see the link. To place a
hyperlink, advertisers have to pay the blog owner, based on the time he/she
wants the link to be active.

Some blogs are used as selling points for digital or multimedia products such as
music. Such blogs such as ebay, and you-tube are used to sell mp3 format music
and videos directly from the artists or their agents. Some Tanzanian, other East
African and African musicians benefit from this arrangement, such as the FM
Academia and Machozi Bands from Tanzania, Samba Mapangala and his
Virunga Band from Kenya, and Papa Wemba from the Democratic republic of
Congo, all have their music albums on sale in their blogs and other agents’ blogs
such as DigitalCongo, Africassette, SternsMusic, Africambiance, You Tube, etc.

Opportunities for Marketing Companies:

Companies with goods or services to offer for sale can establish their own blogs.
By doing this they can establish an interactive Customer Care system. Many
companies with such blogs use the interactive tools to assist their customers
when they face problems, e.g. the East Africa TV site (www.eatv.tv) allows their
viewers from Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, Kampala, and those receiving signal
through cable and satellite connections to comment on the quality of their
programs and to interact with other viewers, through email and SMS (mobile
phone Short Message Service).

If this method is seen to be technically demanding, then companies can have a

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page on the site. This allows the customers
to ask questions, and then the company officials answer them and post the
answers onto the blog.

Blogs are an upcoming opportunity for companies because, primarily, the online
community is growing by the day. The collective community of all blogs is known
as the blogosphere. Since all blogs are on the internet by definition, they may
appear to be interconnected and socially networked. Discussions among
members of the blogosphere have been generally used by the media as a gauge
of public opinion on various issues. A collection of local blogs is sometimes
referred to as a bloghood e.g the Kiswahili Bloghood. The number of bloggers in
Tanzania is increasing by the day, especially with the increase of internet users
and the increase in blogging habits. This creates a whole new dimension in
emarketing, and definitely an opportunity to get marketing messages across to
the target market.

Furthermore, blogs can reach even those communities living abroad. This
advantage is not common to other forms of advertising media. At the moment,
only a few companies are taking advantage of this situation in Tanzania and
those that do find themselves operating at the cutting edge of he industry.

As far as the issue of public relations is concerned, blogs are very effective tools
for building a good image (goodwill) even if people don’t really buy the
products/services offered by the company. Bu sponsoring or placing ads on
blogs, companies associate themselves with the new generation of online
buyers, most of whom are of the age 12 – 45. If the company’s target market is in
this group, then it is wise to take advantage of the opportunity presented in the
form of blogs.

In Tanzania, advertising on blogs fits goods and services targeting middle and
high-income earners due to the nature of internet accessibility by different
groups. In developed nations, those who can access the internet represent a
greater chunk of the society, and therefore blog advertising can be designed to
reach a greater audience.

Blogs and Personal E-Marketing

Personal Marketing is, in essence, self-marketing. It involves all the ways of

making others know about yourself e.g. your personality, your background, your
professional qualifications, our interests, and the like so as to attract them to
associate themselves with you. Personal marketing is widely used in luring
consultancy work, job seeking, or in political campaigns.

Back in 2004, the role of blogs became increasingly mainstream, as political and
business consultants, news services, and candidates began using them as tools
for outreach and opinion forming even in political campaigning. During the
second Iraq war blogs were used by politicians and political candidates to
express opinions on war and other issues and this cemented blogs' role as a
news source. Even politicians not actively campaigning, such as the UK's Labour
Party's MP Tom Watson, began to blog to bond with constituents.

In the recent US Presidential Elections, the Democratic Party Candidate, Sen.

Barrack Obama (now US President Elect) used the internet, particularly the
blogging tactic, in seeking the votes of young Americans. The significance of this
tactic to his campaign was very high because it won him massive votes primarily
because bloggers associated themselves with him, while there were times when
he would chat with the people he met online about matters of interest and his
policies.

Our President, Hon Jakaya M. Kikwete, has a blog, in which there are times
when he responds to people’s comments. On the Goernment website,
www.tanzania.go.tz there is a link to this blog, which is written “Talk to the
President”.

Blogs and their influence in people’s Purchasing Decisions

In January 2005, the Fortune magazine listed eight bloggers that business
people "could not ignore": Peter Rojas, Xeni Jardin, Ben Trott, Mena Trott,
Jonathan Schwartz, Jason Goldman, Robert Scoble, and Jason Calacanis.
These are seen as opinion leaders in blogging. In the Africambiance African
music forum/blog I can identify the opinion leaders as “MS”, “Alicia”, “Carlos”, and
“Ndomanueno”. These are seen as opinion leaders, but later on, I have come to
realise that these people are very prominent and influental people in real life,
they have vast knowledge of the African Music environment, some with even
more than 40 years of experience in the industry like “MS”, whose real name is
Martin Sinnock, the most famous African music analist and columnist for the Beat
Magazine in the US. “Alicia”, actually turned out to be Mr. Roger Kayembe alias
“Chez-Ntemba”, the most famous music promoter in Africa, “Carlos” is actually
Mr. Jean-Pièrre Saah, owner of JPS Music which is the biggest Afrian Music
recording and distribution company in France, and Ndomanueno is actually the
most respected music composer, nicknamed “Poet” and guitar player from
Congo RDC, Simaro Lutumba, who has been the Vice President o TP OK Jazz,
Franco’s band for more than 40 years! Their opinion on the quality of Fally
Ipupa’s album (Droit Chemin) saw its sales go up and hit the Disc D’Or (Gold
CD) within 1 month of its release because music fans usually wait for their album
review before going out shopping. These opinion leaders in the blogosphere do
influence people to act a certain way, and therefore they cannot be ignored
because blogging is not the only thing they do. Through blogging people tend to
know exactly how they feel about certain products and if they recomment it, then
their influence really matters in boosting sales.The opposite is also true.

Blogs and Marketing Intelligence

Marketing intelligence refers to the system of information or data gathering

which aims at assisting management in decicion-making or to monitor earlier
decisions and their effectiveness. In recent years, the popularity of blogs has
given rise to "fake blogs" as a tactic used by marketers for marketing
intelligence purposes. These are fictional blogs which are established by
companies as marketing tools to gather information about how the public
perceive their product(s). The information obtaned from such a blog is used to
make adjustment and improvements to their products.

Another tactic which can be used by smart marketers, is for them to join other
popular online forums, anonimously, and provoke discussions on certain
products of interest to them. This could be their products, or competing firms’
products. As a result, they get to know what people feel about their
goods/services and then immediately act on the improvement suggestions for
their products. I have seen this tactic in practise here in Tanzania, particularly for
mobile phone companies and their products, particularly at the time when every
company was struggling to develop a low tarriff product e.g. “Xtreme” for Tigo,
“Chizika” for Vodacom, “Jirushe” for Zain and “Babkubwa” for Zantel.

Blogging Consequences

Things are not all good with blogging. Blogging has brought about a range of
legal liabilities and other often unforeseen consequences. Although these cases
are still rare in Tanzania due to the fact that blogging is not all that common.

Some instances that can occur as a result of blogging and its dynamics include
libel (defamation liability), employment, political dangers, dangers from religious
provocation, risk to personal safety, etc. Companies and individuals who decide
to take on blogs as emarketing tools need to avail themselves of the necessary
information on exactly what can happen as a result of using blogs to foster their
business.

 Libel (Defamation Liability)

There are cases where some defaming comments can be posted by blogers,
these might be damaging to some members of the community and eventually to
the company associated to the blogs. As a result, the aggrieved persons might
decide to sue the blogger, site host, or the site owner (Administrator/oderator) for
libel. In some countries, like the United States of America, there is a separate
Libel Law. In libel or defamation cases main issue is usually the murky legal
question of who's liable for comments posted on blogs.

 Employment

Some employees usually give out secrets about their employer and the general
working environment. Attempts to hide the bogger’s identity are usually not very
successful because there are ways of tracking down the blogger’s location
through the IP address, and therefore using phoney names protects the blogger
not. Those employees who blog about elements of their place of employment
raise the issue of employee branding, since their activities can begin to affect the
brand recognition of their employer and once the employer identified, then some
information leaked can be used against the Company by competitors or people
might associate the blogger and his/actions as being similar to the employer’s
culture, however bad it may appear. Such assciations might tarnish the
employer’s image.

Back in 2005 one Mark Jen was fired, after only 10 days of employment. He was
Hired by Google as an Assistant Product Manager. He posted corporate secrets
on his personal blog, which apeared to be unreleased products and company
finances only one week before the company was scheduled to announce its
financial results. Google demanded that he remove the sensitive material from
the blog, and two days after complying with the instructions, he was sacked.

 Political Dangers

Blogging can sometimes touch politically-sensitive areas, and trigger a political

provocation because blogs are much, much, harder to control than broadcast or
print media. As a result, the Government can decide to suppress blogs and
punish those who maintain them or even the bloggers.

In Tanzania, the typical example is the famous Jambo Forum (JF) blog was
ordered to close, and some members were charged with instigation of political
unrest and provocation.

 Dangers of Religious Provocation

Some comments by bloggers can be interpreted as being religiously provocative.

Bloggers shold be very careful in choosing their words lest they cause chaos.
Such comments might cause people to regard the comapanies which have
placed adverts in these blogs as supporters of such provocation, even if the
comments were unintentional. A company might find its products being shunned
by a certain group in the society due to some comments by bloggers.

 Personal Safety

Sometimes blogging gets personal. It is very unfortunate that there is a possibility

of attacks or threats among bloggers, without apparent reason. There is no
systematic code of conduct for bloggers and in some cases bloggers become
targets of such vicious threats and misogynistic insults, and in extreme cases this
causes them to fear for their safety. When it comes to this point, blogs lose their
reason for existence and become useless.

Concluding Remarks

From the discussions hereinabove, it is evident that there is an opportunity for

more people and organizations to make proper use of blogs in accessing their
markets. They are very useful tools for personal marketing, marketing
intelligence and business promotion. The trend is still slow, but once people
realize how effective blogs can be, then I can count on the fact that more will use
them as a promotool. As far as the internet connection cost I concerned, most
features now come with mobile phones, and therefore one doesn’t need to buy
an expensive computer in order to access the internet. On top of threat recent
products by cell phone companies such as Zain and Zantel have enabled the
service to available for TShs. 100,000/= per month, with unlimited internet
access. The future looks good, but we need more computer literate people who
spend considerable time online so as to have a significant blogosphere for
Tanzanian products. Otherwise, it will continue to be a cyber world of the few.
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4. Hart N.A., Case studies in International Marketing, Prentice Hall - 1995,
UK.
5. Keeping V., The history of blogging and its significance in the modern
business world, Journal of E-marketing, Vol. 73, pp. 25-27.

Web Resources:

6. http://www.issamichuzi.blogspot.com
7. http://www.africambiance.org
8. http://www.wordpress.spotistarehe.blogspot.com
9. http://en.www.wikipedia.org/wiki/blogs
10. www.eatv.tv
11. http://www.oecd.org/competition
12. www.darhotwire.com
13. http://www.jamboforum.blogspot.com
14. http://www.jamiiforum.blogspot.com