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Blogging Is Dead. Oh, Really?

March 4, 2011 •

You can always tell when it’s been a slow news day. There’s yet another provoca­tive news story, pro­nounc­ing the death of email, or blog­ging, or Twit­ter. You name it.

Sev­eral weeks ago the New York Times wrote that blog­ging among young peo­ple was on the decline, accord­ing to research from the Pew Center’s Inter­net and Amer­i­can Life Project. Later, more thought­ful com­men­taries appeared, not­ing that blog­ging isn’t dead; it is just evolv­ing.

The obser­va­tion I found most per­ti­nent is from GigaOm:

Blog­ging… has evolved into much more of a con­tin­uum of pub­lish­ing

My expe­ri­ence, although far from sci­en­tific, is that blog­ging and tweet­ing have become part of a con­tin­uum of con­ver­sa­tion. Peo­ple choose the means of expres­sion that is most com­fort­able, per­haps most con­ve­nient at the moment — the means that best suits what they want to say — and to whom.

With both my per­sonal blog and my pro­fes­sional blog, I’ve been sur­prised by the num­ber of com­ments that arrive via email rather than as com­ments posted directly in the blog. It takes an extra step or two for some­one to con­tact me by email, rather than Word­Press’ built-in com­ment forms. This sug­gests some­thing about the person’s moti­va­tion.

The more thought­ful the com­ment, or the more it per­tains to the writer’s spe­cific busi­ness issues, the more likely it is to arrive in my email in-box, rather than appear as a pub­lic com­ment on my blog. More than once I’ve found myself encour­ag­ing the comment’s author to share it from within the blog, because I believed it would res­onate with oth­ers.

I also rec­og­nize that, at times, people’s only recourse is to com­mu­ni­cate with me via email, because the oppor­tu­nity to com­ment on a post has expired.

Sadly, I’ve been forced to stop accept­ing blog com­ments within a month or so of post­ing a new entry, to avoid inces­sant spam­ming by the East­ern Euro­pean link farms. Some­how I just haven’t been able to swal­low the need to add a Captcha form, the auto­mated alter­na­tive to fend­ing off the spam­mers.

The fact that spam­mers have become so active says that there’s con­tin­u­ing value in blogs.

And then there was the mes­sage on 2/26 from pro­lific tweeter Jere­miah Owyang:

Tweet more than 20 times a day? You should blog. Pay your­self first.

No, blog­ging isn’t dead: it’s just part of a con­tin­uum of con­ver­sa­tion options.

But Where’s the Conversation?

October 21, 2009 •

The hype around social media as con­ver­sa­tion has become deaf­en­ing.

Much of the hyper­bole comes from agen­cies and con­sul­tants who have seized upon social media as the next wave; their moti­va­tion is self-serv­ing, of course. Pro­mot­ing their cre­den­tials as social media experts enables them [Read more…]

PR 2.0 Book by Solis & Breakenridge

May 5, 2009 •

The pub­lic­ity team for Putting the Pub­lic Back in Pub­lic Rela­tions asked me for a review in this blog. This is the lat­est book by Brian Solis and Deirdre Break­en­ridge, two emi­nent thought lead­ers in the world of pub­lic rela­tions and social media. Photo of book jacket by Solis & Breakenridge

Their book is an in-depth dis­cus­sion of their man­i­festo for “a New PR” — to rein­vent the prac­tice of PR given the onslaught of social media, new forms of peer-to-peer engage­ment, and the emer­gence of con­ver­sa­tional mar­ket­ing. There’s a lot to like in what they’re advo­cat­ing, even though it threat­ens to turn the tra­di­tional prac­tice of mar­ket­ing inside out.

But — I’ve strug­gled for a week now to get my thoughts in order before writ­ing the review, as requested by their pub­lisher. (For my cre­ative pro­cras­ti­na­tion, see this post.) [Read more…]

Fun with Social Media

April 30, 2009 •

I’m sup­posed to be writ­ing a book review on social media for PR pro­fes­sion­als, but I stum­bled on Wor­dle and couldn’t resist putting my notes into visual form first. (Yes, I con­fess this is cre­ative pro­cras­ti­na­tion.)

Here are ideas sparked by the hand­writ­ten notes I took while read­ing Putting the Pub­lic Back in Pub­lic Rela­tions: How Social Media Is Rein­vent­ing the Aging Busi­ness of PR, by Brian Solis and Deirdre Break­en­ridge:

new-PR-book-review-visualized

For those who haven’t yet played with Wor­dle [Read more…]

About This Blog

Reflec­tions on life, travel, books, and yoga. Think­ing out loud about the pur­suit of mind­ful­ness and well-being.

Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

About Me

Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

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