Blogs – the motherships of social media content?

Captain’s blog, stardate 23.9.10

While the Johnny-come-latelys of online marketing -Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare have got all the attention in recent years,  the blogs which often supply them – online content ‘motherships’ if you will, have quietly moved into the publishing  mainstream.

A new report from eMarketer shows that 60% of the US online population will be reading blogs by 2014, a rise of 15% since 2008.

By way of contrast, over the same period, the number of bloggers has only increased by 2% to 13.3%.

This seems strange in a way, if the medium is growing in influence, why aren’t bloggers rushing to grab the opportunity to have their voice heard? The answer is probably just that is is hard to maintain a good quality blog, even for those who like writing them.

When I speak to companies about blog management, their comments often echo this – they know blogs are important but they just can’t see where the content will come from and rather than have a rubbish blog, they’d prefer to have no blog at all.

The solution we propose is divert some of the PR budget to the blog and outsource to a PR agent that understands online, who can manage your blog in the same way any online publication is managed, using professional writers and journalists creating credible, branded content. Create an editorial agenda, include keywords to boost SEO and then start marketing that content though social media.

Stick some analytics behind it and watch the smiles at the next marketing meeting when visitor numbers jump!