Blogging is Here to Stay

Blogging. What is it? Who should use it? What is the correct way to blog? The answers to these questions are quite arbitrary. Blogger defines a blog as

...a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world.

Although the definition is vague, the importance of blogging is concrete.

Blogging is a fairly new phenomenon that has changed the way we learn. There are blogs about virtually everything from personal diaries to political forums. You can learn how to fix your toilet on one blog and in a few clicks read a blog on what the newest technology fad will be. It’s constantly changing and continually updated. But why do we care?

Today’s society is a need-to-know-now world. People are no longer patient and do not want to sort through a table of contents for a recipe or to wait on the newspaper to arrive the next morning to see why the fire trucks drove by their house. They want to know what happens as its happening and want to be able to track trends of what is getting ready to happen next in order to be on top of their game. If an organization waits 24 hours, they are too late. Someone else has already given that person the information they were seeking, probably 23 hours prior.

In marketing, blogs can be very powerful. A company can use blogs in order to give a personality to the organization. This persona can increase trust and credibility with the publics the organization is trying to reach.

Blogs create a community to the reader. People can follow other blogs and can be followed. It is a way for the person to stay on top of everything and anything they are potentially interested in following. Even if a person does not follow a blog, these blogs are linked to search engines so when someone Googles “Why does my toilet keep flushing?” the blog page on how to fix that pesky tank can pop up in the search results leading the person to click on that blog, and potentially, they could be clicking on Lowe’s website to buy the supplies they need. I wonder if Lowe’s has a blog. I need to sell them on that idea. Excuse me while I look into this.

… Sorry for the interruption. While Lowe’s does not have a Do It Yourself blog, I did find an interesting DIY blog for anyone interested.