I see a lot of research out there saying that not very many people read blogs. At HP we also conduct a lot of focus group research where we ask people if they read many blogs. Overwhelmingly most people say they don’t read blogs.
So are blogs still relevant? (I bet you can guess my answer) Yes of course they are. And for two reasons:
- While the number of readers of blogs may be relatively small, it’s the influencers that are reading them.
- More people read blogs than they realize.
When we ask people in the focus groups what online sources they use to get information, in most cases it turns out that they are reading blogs and didn’t even know it.
The problem comes from the misperceptions of blogs. Your average consumer (or CTO, CIO, etc) believes that blogs are personal journals where people rant about unimportant stuff. While that’s partially true it’s obviously a far cry from the whole story.
The truth is that most media companies and newspapers now host some sort of a “blog,” even if they don’t call it that. Does that news story your reading have commenting enabled and a little orange button somewhere that says “RSS” or “XML”? Then guess what? It’s a blog.
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You touch on an interesting issue in this post. On the Statesman’s Voices site, we have blogs and forums in the traditional sense. However, on our main website, every section has an RSS feed and story commenting is enabled universally.
This begs the question of what distinguishes our regular stories from our blog posts. The answer (at least as far as I’ve been told) has to do with voice. Blogs tend to be written more informally than traditional news stories.
Our readers are definitely confused by the whole situation though, and this doesn’t appear likely to change in the near future. Needless to say, we get some interesting phone calls. I guess the bottom line is that however we choose to refer to them (blogs, forums, story comments, etc.), they’ve prompted a lot of interaction and that was the goal from the beginning.
Great point Patrick. I think another distinguishing feature I should have mentioned was an ongoing “log” as in Web log or blog. Typically a blog is a series of ongoing posts “a conversation.”
Often when the media enables commenting and RSS. like the Statesman they are not an ongoing “log” but individual “posts.”
Hi Tac,
I agree with this 150%. And as your other commenter, Patrick, points out, the line is becoming increasingly gray between blogs and traditional news sites.
I’ve even seen small business “corporate” websites created using WordPress software, that have blog features incorporated right in them (not as a separate blog).
I have started asking people if they like specific attributes of blogs, such as the ability to leave comments on websites, short items written in conversational format, and so on. That tends to get at useful feedback, rather than confusing people with bizarre (to them) nomenclature like “blogs”.
Best,
Anita
Anymore, I just tell people that a blog is just an article that makes it easy for readers to
1. comment back
2. easily forward it to others
3. makes you more “noticable” and searchable on the web.
My biggest gripe is when people (like…plane jumping home builders) say they are “blogging” but turn off the comment feature.
Anita,
Great point. I think the key to “selling” businesses on blogging, is often to not use the lingo.
Jen,
You wouldn’t be speaking about Corey would you
I agree, I think if you don’t allow commenting then you just have a content management system.