Reality Check: Blogs Haven’t Lost Their Mojo

One of the downsides of the hype about Twitter (aka the glamor girl) is how it makes blogs look downright dowdy. It’s easy for everyone to get all hot and bothered about 140-character (or less) messages because anyone can do it fairly well. Blogs, however, require time, a nugget of an idea, some work and, hopefully, solid writing.

In other words, Twitter is easy; blogs are difficult. Twitter is dessert; blogs are dinner. Twitter is paint-by-numbers, blogs are a canvas, some paint and an easel.

Nevertheless, millions of blogs continue to be created every day because they’re a low-barrier platform for anyone to ruminate, pontificate, speculate, opine and babble about anything and everything. Unlike Twitter, there are no arbitrary restrictions on the length of a post. You can go long, you can go short (a la master blogger Seth Godin), you can post a photograph, or comment on someone else’s blog post.

As Peter Kim outlined in a recent blog post, there are plenty of reasons why blogs appear to be losing their mojo. But I believe Kim’s thesis ignores some basic truths – the blogosphere continues to expand, and blogging continues to be the social platform to demonstrate insight, and the ability to create a community around it.

This is the reason that I encourage most of my clients to seriously consider writing a blog to show customers and potential customers who they are and what they think. To me, blogs are the perfect business card, white paper and marketing brochure in one tidy package. It also helps that Google loves blogs so blogs are a great SEO tool.

Sure, blogs aren’t easy because you’ve got to work them on a regular basis. (Note: “work them” means staying committed, which could mean one post/week or several posts/week). But in the long run, the rewards from blogging outweigh anything you’ll get from Twitter.

For more counter-thoughts on Kim’s blog thesis, check out the Future Buzz. As well, the chart below that shows how WordPress.com and Blogger.com have grown over the past year (27.7% and 28.2% growth respectively in unique U.S. visitors).