Blogs as marketing tools for dummies

Although I’m not very sure whether a blog can help build hype around an Indian movie, I thought of sharing an article that I read recently. Deepti Khanna Bose writes about Blogging in The Marketing, Advertising and Media Weekly:

Take, for example, the blogging success of 'Mangal Pandey — The Rising'. Apart from the online contests, the producers hosted a blog, which fans could go onto and actually post their comments and views about the up-coming film. The star of the film, Aamir Khan, also made an appearance on the blog every so often, and aired out his views on what the fans said, as well an answered a few questions. As a result of this, 'Mangal Pandey' gives you nearly a hundred thousand hits on Google; more than seventy per cent of which take you to something related to the film. And the film hasn't even released yet.

Sanjoy Narayan, Editor of Business Today spoke at the recently concluded Indian Magazine Summit 2005:

"The challenge today is the paucity of time; it is imperative to give relevant information but the time spent by readers is immensely low,” Narayan of Business Today said, "Today, blogging makes reporters out of everyone. News and analyses is disseminated among networks, which are ever growing. The reading habits of youngsters are not encouraging." Narayan proposed the use of the Internet in a more far-reaching manner and opined, "Most publishers haven't embraced the Internet the way it needs to be done. There should be a seamless integration of print and the Internet," he felt.