Blogging is dead…a phrase that has been going around for as long as I can remember since I started my business over 8 years ago…and it’s still going around.
Lots of reasons people think blogging is dead…here are just a few…
- Takes too much time to read
- Little value in some of the “pimping” blogs (those selling products disguised as being helpful)
- Self-centered ranting with little value
- Extreme views trying to gain attention but again, no value
- Things move too fast to spend reading blogs
- Lots of other social channels to get information quickly
You might have some of your own or have heard others from your colleagues. And I don’t disagree with most of these items on the list above…
But three key questions keep coming back to haunt us…
- Where does our audience go to get “the story” in more than 140 characters or short bursts?
- How does our audience “get to know us” and what we are passionate about?
- Where can our audience get our deepest insights and knowledge that can truly “help” them?
Content Marketing…the new phrase for today that is designed to help answer these three questions. It is hot and it is coming at us like a Tsunami from every direction. Why? Because all the other crap being thrown at us by companies on all the social channels isn’t working…it isn’t getting our attention…it isn’t causing us to take action…it isn’t helping and it isn’t working.
In reality…content marketing is “blogging reincarnated”…blogging with a different name associated with it…a new name on the same solution. The same problem exists today that has been around from the beginning time when it comes to marketing…companies trying to connect with their audience to sell them stuff. We thought social media would be the holy grail…it isn’t and won’t be for the way most companies use it. But it works famously well for those using it the way it was designed. What’s missing?
VALUABLE, HELPFUL, INSIGHTFUL, THOUGHT PROVOKING CONTENT…the stuff those who are connected to their audiences write in their blogs.
You don’t have to call it Blogging…you can call it Content Marketing if you feel better about it. But in the end, it is blogging reincarnated with a different name and different package attempting to do the same thing blogging was originally designed to do…HELP YOU DO BETTER AT WHAT YOU DO BEST!
