All Aboard the Blogging Bandwagon

As someone who has been diligently and enthusiastically blogging for three years, I find it somewhat amusing (and encouraging) to see the mainstream media finally climbing on board the blogging bandwagon. After trying to ignore and/or dismiss blogs as nothing more than a fad and not worth the time or effort to explore, the mainstream media has quickly changed directions about how it views blogging and the medium’s impact.

Case in post is the National Post, which has aggressively enhanced its online presence in recent months by overhauling its Web site and rolling out a number of blogs – arguably playing catch up with Canada’s two biggest newspapers, the Toronto Star and Globe & Mail (which recently expanded its Web site, including a flurry of new blogs). Reading today’s National Post, I wasn’t sure whether to clap or chuckle upon seeing a long feature story, “Mommy.com”, about how mother-focused bloggers are “becoming more popular and marketers are looking to cash in”. This is not a new phenomena but it does reflect a couple of things: one, Sunday is Mother’s Day so all of today’s newpapers are chock-a-block with related stories, and two, blogs are starting to taken more seriously by the media and, more important, advertisers.

If advertisers start to feel more comfortable with blogs, it could see more of their marketing budgets trickle on to the Web and, hopefully, to the blogosphere, which has been regarded, for the most part, as the Wild West or the land of angst-ridden teenage diarists. Truth be told, there’s a lot great blog content that readers (Fred Wilson estimates there are 150 million blog readers) are eating up. It couldbe that we’re in for a new wave of growth as blogs get more love from the mainstream media and advertiers. All I can say is: bring it on, bring it on.