Is blogging really dead?
Declaring the death of a trend can get attention but it doesn’t make it true. Take “blogging is dead”, or “dying”, as a prime example.
We recently came across a Mark Twain-like “death”of blogs and the Web. The supposition is based on the belief that blogs simply get drowned out by the avalanche of data choking would-be readers’ mailboxes, browsers, and social-media pages. There is truth to the claim of data overload, of course, but it doesn’t nullify the positive impact of well-conceived blog content that serves the interests of readers and grows the number of the visitors you want coming to your site.
There’s certainly no data we’re aware of to suggest a declining number of blogs published on corporate web sites. In fact, it’s just the opposite. It was projected last year that 43% of U.S. companies would be utilizing blogs for marketing in 2012 – compared to 16% in 2007. So, yes, reports of the death of blogging are exaggerated.
The reason for its good health is easy to understand. Keeping web sites and blog content fresh and relevant to customer readership continues to be the simplest and quickest means of sustaining and enhancing your web presence.
It’s also a simple, quick way to build and substantiate thought leadership in your category whenever you can hold forth on topics of educational interest to your marketplace of customers, prospects and industry followers.
Branded blogs that thrive are those that evolve right along with the web itself. Just as corporate web sites are far more interactive today than their passive ancestors, today’s business blogs and market-savvy bloggers strive for two-way conversational engagement with readers. They invite give and take. This is in sharp contrast to their one-way communication soapbox predecessors.
Empirical evidence ties sales productivity, in the form of lower-cost lead generation, to a vendor’s blog activity. Another reason why intelligently out-sourced blog content development to domain experts can represent such an intelligent (and measurable) investment in business development. As long as they remain so useful, blogs won’t be disappearing any time soon.
Did your blog generate quality leads last year? What’s your process for coming up with new ideas to write about? Do you solicit subject matter from customers? What’s your plan?