This post is by Michael Pollock, the original owner of Small Business Branding. Yaro Starak now owns and produces the latest content for this blog.
>> Return to the Small Business Branding front page <<
The other day, someone suggested to me that blogging is a fad. I hate fads. I am very fad-sensitive. Fad-averse. Fad-ophobic even. If I thought blogging was a fad, I’d not be doing it. But don’t take my word for it. Consider these words from Robert Scoble and Shel Isreal, two of the preeminent, A-list bloggers on the planet. This is from their book proposal "The Red Couch – Why businesses should blog and how to do it effectively":
1. Blog or Die
Every few years, technology disrupts the way things are. This annoys
business people because change often can cost customers and/or profits.
It’s also distracting and confusing to determine which technical
innovations are fundamental and which are just fads. Blogging, the
fastest-growing technology phenomenon in history, is no mere fad. It is
transforming many levels of business-to-customer communications at
precisely a time when traditional communications systemsâ€â€ads, PR
campaigns, customer support and services have lost effectiveness and
corporate culture is generally distrusted. Blogging gives customers,
prospects and other people who matter, a window into an otherwise
faceless company, letting interested outsiders see real, dedicated and
fallible people doing the best they can, often with passion. Companies
of all sizes, ranging from local sign painters to Fortune 50 executives
are improving their company relationships with their publics. Others
are simply ignoring blogging, continuing to do things the way they
always have. They do so at their peril.
Still not convinced? How about this from Adam L. Penenberg, writing in Wired:
Nevertheless, we are in the midst of a new kind of internet boom,
thanks in large part to this weblog phenomenon. It’s not an economic
bubble, where scores of startup companies run by fresh-faced
20-somethings are blowing through wads of venture capital in the hopes
of becoming the first eBay or Amazon.com in their digital niches.
Rather, it’s a revolution in the dissemination of intellectual capital.
Some would say I’m overselling this, but then again these are
probably the same people who consider bloggers "pajama pundits." Or are
the solipsists
who once looked upon the internet as a fad, believing it would suffer
the same fate as CB radios, and who once thought online news would
never equal print.