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Martin here. On today’s show it’s Joe and me. Gini’s on the road but she’ll be back next week.
Our topic comes from a post by Mathew Ingram about the state of blogging and how it has evolved. We’ve noticed a number of people who were active bloggers have slowed down their output, moved away from the platform or started publishing somewhere else.
So is that a trend? Are we entering a post-blogging landscape?
Joe starts off by mentioning a series like Sherlock that looked edgy and new a few years ago, yet seems a bit dated today. He thinks the same may be true for blogs.
I always considered blogging more of a publishing platform rather than an unedited stream or conversation. And as a PR person who wrote for clients, I found my voice again when I started my blog.
Joe thinks blogging has become more of a place for personal journaling. It hasn’t gone away but now it has a specialized purpose.
Joe also noticed that for a number of years we were fixated on the river of news and that’s not the only way for information to be organized. New apps value content that doesn’t carry as much weight and that the search engines can’t grab and data mine.
It’s a bigger range of content. And it’s about distinctive voices – columnists. In many ways, it always was.
And before we go: I noticed, as I was listening to the episode and writing the notes, that I said, ‘The Snapchat’. Yipes. Honestly, I didn’t mean to. Let’s chalk it up my affinity for the old Triple-W… and (hopefully) leave it at that.
Is blogging simply publishing? Are you moving to something more ephemeral like chat? Do you want your ideas archived or would you like your comments to be delivered and disappear?
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Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.
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Hi Guys,
A message from the Netherlands…A special Hi for Gini…
I totally recognize what you’re saying about blogging. BUT.. In our market, it really depends on the industry. If you take a look at blogs in the lifestyle, food and fashion section..Those are still very vibrant communities (and commercialized as well). We’re experiencing that for various clients every day. When you take a look at our own business blog. We’re facing the same as you guys do. Engagement, based on our blog has decreased. Less comments, less Twitter Conversations etc.. BUT (2).. our blog is still very vital for longtail content when clients are looking for a progressive PR firm..And due to that, traffic still increases. Between 2009-2012 the combination Twitter + blog was our killer machine.. Now, it seems that blog + search via google (longtail) are the driver for traffic and LinkedIn Longform Posts seem to work really well for engagement.
Jos, you are right about the continuing importance of blogs for companies. At Thornley Fallis, we use our blog as the core of our content marketing program. And we’ve been able to generate a steady flow of qualified leads that come to us via the Contact Me button and link that we include in most posts. But I do think that individual thought leaders as well as the mass population have moved on from blogging as a platform. However, as Canadians, knowing how we often are lumped in with the US market and US patterns of behaviour, Martin and I should be the first to acknowledge regional and national variations.