As Yvonne reminded us recently, Mommy and Daddy Bloggers ... ARE Your Market.

Some are your customers. Some are influencers of your customers. Some are your present or future employees. If you're lucky, some of them are writing about you and your products or services.

All that word-of-mouth marketing that all those businesses are chasing is being propelled around the world by bloggers, whether professional or casual. What you get out of "slogging through" the blog topics they care about enough to publish is a priceless glimpse into ... what they care about!

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Born Digital coverSo if you're one of those hard-nosed, serious-minded business folk who's still "digitally illiterate" — and maybe running around bragging about it — consider that the generation now coming of age sees online communication the way you see telephones.

Nobody would run around demanding ROI justification for maintaining a telephone connection for your business — it's too obviously essential to business communication.

That's how many of your customers and employees see blogging and social media now, and nearly all will in the near future. From the Introduction to Born Digital:

"These kids are different. They study, work, write, and interact with each other in ways that are different from the ways you did growing up. They read blogs rather than newspapers.

They're more likely to send an instant message (IM) than to pick up a telephone ... Major aspects of their lives — social interactions, friendships, and civic activities — are mediated by digital technologies. And they've never known any other way of life." (Emphasis added.)

Want to reach your customers next year, or in five years? Then you (or someone who openly represents your brand) had better become "digitally literate" PDQ.

This concept of digital literacy addresses both of Graeme's questions, relating to trust and what you get out of engaging with bloggers and other social media users. Because digital literacy includes the ability to find and evaluate the quality of information online, as well as using it to create online content.

Grounds well cover It may seem self-evident now, but "slogging through" other people's blogs is precisely the place for businesses to start, as Charlene Li and Josh Bern off from For rester Research advise in Groundswell:

1. Start by listening. A small knot of people at a cocktail party are conversing. Would you walk up to them and just start talking? Or would you listen, first, and see how you can join their conversation? The blogoshpere is the same. Listen to what's being said out there before you dive in. ... (Emphasis in original.)

Tactical Transparency coverOur friends (and WME clients) Shel Holtz and John Havens make the same point with their chapter title, "En-gauge the Conversation: How Issues Blogs Show People You're Listening," in their new book, Tactical Transparency.

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They drive it home with this quote from Bert Langert at McDonald's about his Open for Discussion blog: "... We're already part of the conversation.

So one important way for businesses to view blogs — both their own blogs and others' — is as "listening posts."