Blogs: The Boneyard of the Web?

Are blogs still relevant? Are they still popular or are they becoming a digital boneyard of text, left to the biting dry winds of the desert Web? We asked this a few months ago and decided to do a little research and see what we might find for answers. In short, blogs aren’t quite dead, but the halcyon days are gone.

In Atlantic Canada, England and the Northeastern U.S. of the 2,700 blogs we have in our system, only 23% are updated monthly and only 12% are updated more than once a month. That’s down overall about 54% over 2009. The pace of new blogs in the region has slowed a fair bit as well.

The worst decline has been in the business sector so far in 2010. For business blogs we also found only 11% actually updated their blog once a month. On average, a business would post an entry to their blog 3 times per year.

When we looked at the very small business (1-5 people) though, we found that 64% updated their blog more than once a month. These blogs tended to be highly specialized around the industry sector. That got us to wondering if any area of blogs was seeing any ongoing activity. So it was true.

Our research in that direction indicated that those who are more “specialized” in an industry sector such as consultants, advisors or specialty small businesses with a niche have active blogs with good inbound and outbound link densities ranking the blog and business higher in the search engines.

We also found that blogs by specialized businesses tended to push their content into platforms like LinkedIn, Plaxo and Facebook. When we looked at larger small businesses and enterprises in the region though, their blogs were often dusty, neglected and the content was sanitized with few links outbound.

In the consumer/netizen sector, we found that over 60% hadn’t updated their blog for five months on average. We suspect their activity has moved to channels like Facebook, Twitter and similar.

Blogs aren’t dead. Their use however, is changing. Even traffic to blogging platforms such as WordPress and Blogger are down over last year. The halcyon days of blogs are gone and they are being defined now. Content generation by users is shifting and becoming more fragmented.

(Author: G. Crouch)

Listen Up! And Listen Good Before You Engage

How often in sales training do the experts tell sales people “listen to what your prospect is saying. Repeat back what you heard to confirm you understood the question.” It is a fundamental principle in good selling – understand the prospect to be able to provide the solution. This practice applies well to Social Media engagement for business.

An excellent blog post from Washington DC communications firm Livingston talks about this. We have the step of “listening” as our very first element in working with clients. The difference in Social Media is that you don’t begin by vocally asking your “prospect”, in this case your market, what they want/need. You listen to them talking in various Social Media channels.

We work with clients to frame the questions for which they need answers. Then we do a lot of listening using our own set of proprietary tools. There are many On-Demand services that can do this listening from radian6 through to Buzzmetrics. Regardless of what tool is used (they all have good and bad elements) the act of listening is a critical first step towards engagement with Social Media on a business level.

While a company blog may be useful, it’s not where to start, for that is “telling” as opposed to “listening”. Through listening first, a business can understand the shape, tone, style and nature of the conversations taking place, or not taking place, in the Social Mediasphere. The insights from this “listening” will help form a better strategy for how a business deals with Social Media. You will be able to better determine budgets, resource requirements, technologies to use and more.

If you want to close the sale, you need to listen and understand the prospect, provide the right solution…and then ask for the sale.

(Author: Giles Crouch, Managing Partner)

Balanced Reporting and Blogs?

A recent survey by Rasmussen Reports shows there is some demand for “balanced reporting” in blogs. Is there really a potential impact? or is this just “noise” from a survey question? We contend that Blogs have really become the “opinion side” of the media, consumer dominated with business and government only just edging into active engagement in the blogosphere.

The survey says “Fifty-seven percent (57%) say the government should not require websites and blog sites that offer political commentary to present opposing viewpoints. But 31% believe the Internet sites should be forced to balance their commentary” and this is a “politically” focused question as well. The Democrats oppose government mandated balance on the Web by a 48% t 37% margin, while 61% of Republicans reject government involvement in Web content. The conversation it seems, truly is king. Seems unusual that Republicans would be more favourable of independence in content than Democrats.

In short, I doubt we will see any significant debate or impending laws on governing content on the Web anytime soon. Regulating would be a sheer nightmare, and consumer content on the Web continues to grow apace, despite Gartner Research predicting a slow-down in blog activity. We suspect blogging and Social Media to rise in activity based on improved Smart Phone capabilities with the integration of Wi-Fi and 3G service, continued “cocooning” and more time spent at home in a slowing economy with high gas prices.

Do you think we’ll see a rise in Social Media activity in coming months? Will we ever reach a point where government might begin to regulate or attempt to regulate any form of Social Media? Would it even be possible?