How many of you know the origin on the word “blog” ? The word is a shortened version of the term web log. There is a heavily sourced and referenced history of the term on Wikipedia, so you know it must be true. Check it out if you have 15 minutes to spare: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog.
Blogging has evolved from the relatively innocent online diary to a multi-million dollar pimping business.
In the beginning, people were blogging about things they actually cared about. Blogs were personal, allowing people to step over the proverbial too much information line with great regularity. We discovered that most people lead an existence not too dissimilar from our own, but for some reason, they enjoyed sharing details and we enjoyed reading about them. Of course, not all blogs were purely personal. There were journalists, wannabe journalists and category experts that found a home to share their thoughts. Some people gathered quite a following by sharing information online, writing about politics, travel, fashion, music, parenting, etc.
The number of followers for blogs grew organically at first, but as always, people found ways to make money off of them, and advertisers like us began to take notice. Bloggers began endorsing products, companies began soliciting content from subject matters experts to add some third party credibility to their own blogs. In my humble opinion, this intersection of followers and advertising is where we lost the essence of blogging – that authenticity and transparency that made blogs so compelling in the first place.
The average web surfer knows that bloggers and corporations are often in bed together, and if they didn’t, Congress made sure they were protected through recent legislation requiring bloggers to disclose any compensation received for their words. This isn’t the death of the advertising-influenced blog, but it does mean we have to work harder and smarter when bringing our content into the blogosphere.
Authenticity and transparency must be present in what we do. We need to be sure we are communicating with followers, not talking at them, and sharing content that is both useful and interesting. We need to be sure that our focus is on meeting the needs of our followers, not just in meeting our immediate business objectives. And like we preach with every single tactic we present to our clients, it must be strategic.
There is nothing wrong with blogging for dollars, as long as you’ve got something interesting to say.
