Yep. It is high time for a new rule regarding blogging and web publishing in general.
First, definitions! Yay!
Web Publishing: Anything you do online that presents original content or aggregates content for different purposes, including search engines aggregating content and organizing it in searchable format.
Web Site: A place on the web that presents data of all kinds. All media types and the written word for purposes of informing and/or generating revenue from the visitors who find the site.
Blog: A form of web site that organizes information in reverse chronological order ALONG WITH static pages of data. A blog is a web site. A blogger is a web publisher.
A blog is an evolved publishing platform that makes the most sense on today’s web for ease of use, powerful capabilities, and conveyance of text, audio, video, and links to web surfers. Blogs do not replace shopping cart systems, although you can turn a WordPress blog into a shopping cart. And blogs don’t replace video sites, social community platforms or other types of web sites, although today a blog can be any of those things quite capably.
Blogging’s Bad Rap
In my mission to alert people to the importance of blogging for driving organic traffic, getting links, building community, and generating massive buzz for the people who know how to use it, I am seeing patterns.
There are people who wish us to disregard blogs and blogging for being extremely powerful for generating buzz, rankings, and profits (for bloggers whose goal is to make money at their craft). I see, in 2009, this question with regularity: “Wondering if I should start a blog to increase the traffic to my business?” Really? No smiley face indicating sarcasm?
There is also a blatant misrepresentation of blogging as being difficult and harder work than other forms of running a business online. Because some bloggers talk about their entire lives being centered around their blogs, doesn’t mean all bloggers work as hard. Often, people who work less on their blogs, pound for pound, make more money and get more traffic than people who work 7 days a week at it.
To me, this means we’ve done a terrible job at showing people what blogs can do, or, people are so darned afraid of the myths of blogging that they’ll believe anything anyone tells them about the “perils” of blogging.
Most of the information that comes out on the negative side, that I’ve seen personally, comes from people who want others to choose their way of publishing or making money.
Blogging isn’t the only way to get traffic. It’s not the only way to make money online. It’s just superior to all others because of the low point of entry on a technical level for beginner to intermediate people. Nothing compares to the ease of publishing information on the web that blogs afford regular people with average skills.
Show me any method of making money online or publishing online, and I’ll show you something that is either over-hyped (vast majority) or isn’t as easy for the average person to pull off as the sales copy boasts. And no real business opportunity on the web requires less work than running a blog. All successful sites of all kinds became successful as a result of hard work. That is, sites that are still around and aren’t the result of a “one hit wonder” that gained buzz and lost their fame as fast as it came to them.
Blogs are web sites. They can be set up to have every capability any other kind of site on the web does. They are just easier to use and are the darlings of search, community, and buzz marketing.
So, my rule is that blogging no longer to be referred to as a far-flung choice among other more mainstream choices of how to publish on the web. Blogging is the superior choice, but most of all, it is simply another way to publish, period.
Today there are far too many blogs today to consider them anything other than mainstream.
They are making too much money and getting more visitors online today than any other form of web site. Blogs get more traffic than the biggest sites on the web put together. Blogs are the collective voice of the web. More than social communities of any kind.
“From business to fun: What different generations do online.” -USA Today
Why Buy The Cow If You Can Get The Milk For Free?
Blogging or not blogging is simply a choice between some traffic and a lot of traffic if you are talking about free, organic traffic.
If you are talking about paying for traffic, the choice becomes even more clear: Save a ton of money on PPC by getting in the top 10 in organic search for those expensive terms you are paying through the nose for. All of the studies I’ve ever seen on the topic, and that’s a lot, show that people click far more on organic results than they do paid ads. Logic arrives at the same determination. Everyone knows paid ads lead to sales pages. People seeking information don’t always want to be pitched. They want information…now.
People seeking products and services often want independent reviews and opinions before they make buying decisions. Where are they getting much of this 3rd party information? Blogs. And the bloggers are making money from recommendations because of the trust they engender among their readers.
Yes there are a bunch of crappy blogs on the web.
I’ve even read that 80% of blogs on the web are dormant. Which means the rest are carrying 100% of the load! Crappy and dormant blogs say nothing to discredit the technology itself. Good drivers win races. Bad drivers wreck. Neither result has anything to do with the car.
So, today I can safely say that blogging is no longer to be compared to a cheap party trick or passing phase on the web. At least not by otherwise intelligent people. People are choosing this mode of publishing over all others online today. Rather than trying to preserve what worked 5 years ago, which goes completely against the spirit of innovation and rapid evolution the internet is known for, the dinosaurs who are losing their grip on the minds of today’s surfers and online business people need to adapt or die.
The web is moving on. And it isn’t waiting for anyone.
I leave you with this headline from an eMarketer study that should drive the point home:
“Social Nets and Blogs More Popular Than E-Mail”
To my knowledge, this study marks the first time any type of web publishing medium of any kind has ever been compared to or related to the populartiy of something as ubiquitous as email itself.
Let this be the end of the frantic questioning of what “the people” should publish with. Get busy and get blogging!
