You’re driving home from work with a pounding headache. It’s been bugging you all day. Pulse…pulse…pulse. Even worse, you know that your aspirin supply at home has dried up.
What is the first thought on your mind?
“Stop at a local drugstore and buy some.”
CVS, Walgreens, Rite-Aid. They’re all at the forefront when all you need is a quick fix for a cold, headache, or stomach pain. They’re convenient, relatively small, and well laid out.
Since these are such staple retail stores, it begs the question: Where’s their presence in the blogosphere?
Right now, the answer is a resounding nada, zilch, zero.
Do they feel that they are too busy? Well, 79% of the Fortune 100 are finding time – why can’t these three?
Maybe they haven’t looked at the two big benefits of initiating a corporate blog.
- Reputation Management – Every big, national brand has dissidents. When a minor problem isn’t resolved, complaints arise. And if these nit-pickers have a well-read blog or powerful message forum presence, it can snowball into more blog posts, tweets, and messages. Example? Kevin Smith vs. Southwest.
A corporate blog is a great forum for damage control by publicly responding to complaints that consumers may have or announcing new store features.
- SEO – There is a great deal of competition for drug stores. Not only are the big three competing, but virtually every supermarket sells drugs and has a pharmacy. Not to mention online stalwarts like Drugstore.com.
Creating a blog provides unique content for search engines to crawl and for other bloggers to link to. The combination of the two further promotes the brand and overall organization.
To Walgreens, CVS, and Rite-Aid execs – please review the above and engage your online marketing staff to establish a stronger online presence. Your bottom line will thank you.
