Blogging in 2007...Numbers Down, Quality Up?

Business Blog Consulting Blog asks the question: Will 2007 see the death of blogging? Originally posted by Sally Falkow of Expansion Plus on 12/18/06, "The analysts at Gartner have made their predictions for 2007 and they say that blogging will peak next year and all the hype will fizzle out.

"One of their top 10 predictions for 2007 is that the number of bloggers will level off in the first half of next year at roughly 100 million worldwide. The reason: most people who would ever dabble with web journals already have. Those who love it are committed to keeping it up, while others have got bored and moved on, said Daryl Plummer, chief Gartner fellow."

Paul Chaney comments on this and raises the point that these figures include all blogs and there are no stats on business blogs. The point he makes is that in some industries, professionals are just waking up and starting to use blogs effectively for business.

Paul says, "Gartner’s prediction leaves a lot to be desired. First, how many of those 100 million are business blogs? Not the majority to be sure. Second, and I’ll make a little prediction of my own based on my observations of what I’ve seen in the real estate industry, blogging has gone wide, but in 2007 it will go deep."

If you've started blogging, what does this mean for you and your business...how will you "go deep?" To me, it means writing more, revealing more about me and my business, and getting more interactions from and conversations with readers/clients/customers/peers.

I think I just set some goals here for myself, for how I want my blog writing to go in 2007. What about you and your blog writing goals for 2007?

Comments

[Allen Taylor]

I agree with Paul Chaney on business blogs. We're only realizing the potential for these. As he said, in some industries - like Real Estate - professionals are just "waking up" to this form of marketing. In other industries, they're still asleep.

As for predicting the future, I don't think any of us can say for sure how it will play out, but I do believe businesses can tap into some form of video blogging - and many will. I do know this: Blogging will be seen as another SEO tool by business professionals who want to gain better search engine leverage. And it should be.

Don't just talk to your customers; talk to the spiders.

[Paul Chaney]

Allen hit the nail on the head with his remark about not just talking to customers, but talk to the spiders as well.

As we all know, or should know, we really have two audiences: the humans who read our posts and the search engines who do the same. We have to engineer our posts in such a way so that the message makes sense to both.

[John Easton]

I think the report's overall blogging numbers are realistic. Business blogs will probably spike and see a similar declining trend in 2008 or so.

The leveling off and decline is not a bad thing. For those who remain, there will be less distracting noise in the channel. Being a successful business blogger is like being successful with any other marketing tactic; it takes work and patience.

John Easton

[Rikki Arundel]

I was recently running a course for people in the UK working in the voluntary sector and decided to show them how to use blogging and other web2.0 tools to improve communications. I was stunned at now few even knew what a blog was. I told this story to some small business owners who laughed and then said quietly - "what is a blog?"

While I think it's likely that the early adopters may move on to pastures new - the mainstream use of blogging has barely started - and with email spam still increasing I think we are about to see blogging evolve into a more mature communications channel. Also I'm not sure there will be much distinction eventually between blogging, podcasting and vloging - they will all merge into one multimedia communications channel.

[Zachary Houle]

While I would agree somewhat with the need to start 'talking to the spiders,' I also see some businesses who could take this a little too far.

I feel that it is not as important to be No. 1 in the Google search rankings via SEO so much as it is to actually have content that is meaningful to a human audience.

Talking to robots is nice, sure. But they're not the ones buying your products or services.