This edition of ÓpticaPro comes in the wake of the OPÓTICA summit 2026, where I had the opportunity to moderate a round-table dedicated to social media and digital marketing. The discussion was insightful, timely and necessary. But it left me with the feeling that, in the optics sector, we still look at digital in a fragmented way, almost always centred on the platforms of the moment. That is why it seemed timely to continue the topic, not to repeat the conversation, but to explore it in greater depth. Today, I propose that we look at a channel many consider outdated, but which is in fact extremely relevant: the blog.

For years, the enthusiasm for social media such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or LinkedIn pushed the blog into the background. It became almost a distant relative, remembered only when someone said, “we should write more on the website”. But that has a cost. Because, unlike social media, the blog is not just a publishing space: it is a strategic communications channel, a brand asset and, above all, a tool for differentiation in a market where that is urgent.

Differentiating through service quality: why the blog should no longer be optional

Aggressive campaigns, successive discounts, free frames, “free” lenses, promotional bundles. All with the same objective: to attract customers through the easiest route — low price. But the result is plain to see:

• squeezed margins;

• increasingly less loyal customers;

• a widespread perception that “glasses are just glasses”.

When customers believe that all opticians are the same, that all lenses are the same and that all services are the same, the optician becomes a commodity — something basic, undifferentiated, replaceable. And when that happens, price becomes the only criterion for choice.

True differentiation, however, is not in the price. It lies in the quality of service and in the way each optician builds its relationship with the public. And that relationship does not begin when the customer walks into the shop. It begins much earlier. It begins in the way the optician communicates, educates, explains and positions itself. This is where the blog becomes decisive.

Read Miguel Alves’s opinion in ÓpticaPro magazine 275.