Catalogs and Blogs – Not To Sell Product, But to Inspire

In our digital age, you’d think hard-copy product catalogs would have become obsolete.  But, as Molly Soat explains in Marketing News, catalogs are still very much alive and well.  That’s because, Soat explains, companies are “leveraging the content marketing power of catalogs to offer customers ideas and inspiration extending well beyond a brand’s product portfolio”.

The catalogs of today are really magazines, often personalized to the recipients’ purchasing habits.  The pages of today’s catalogs “are filled with artistically styled photography and expertly penned information”. Modern catalogs (and this is the part so relevant for us business blog content writers) contain ”ideas and inspiration extending well beyond a brand’s product portfolio”.

The typical website, I believe, is more like the catalogs of an earlier era, explaining what products and services the company offers, who the “players” are and in what geographical area they operate. Of course, the better websites give at least a taste of the corporate culture and some of the owners’ core beliefs.

Where the continuously renewed business blog writing comes in is parallel to the modern-day catalog, offering ideas and inspiration. For every fact about the company or about one of its products or services, a blog post addresses unspoken questions such as “So, is that different?”, “So, is that good for me?”

Another way in which blog writers can use posts to serve a “New Catalog” function is by condensing website/newpaper/magazine/trade journal wisdom into bite-sized pieces, keeping readers up on industry trends and discoveries.

Yet a third function of the “new catalogs” and “new blog posts” is to debunk common myths. Business owners can use their blog not only as a way to dispense information, but to address misinformation.

For business blogs, just as Molly Soat points out about catalogs – the purpose may not be to sell product, but to inspire!