“Content is King! But Blogging is Dead.”
“People do not read blog posts any more don’t you know?!”
Are you sure about that?
Why is blogging a part of digital marketing anyway? The word “blog” comes from a shortening of the phrase “web log”. Those two words identify and describe an online journal of sorts. The first idea of blogging I (Jason) remember seeing in mainstream media back in 1989 was on the show “Doogie Howser, M.D.”, starring Neil Patrick Harris. Each episode he would sit down and type out an entry on his computer. Al Gore did not invent the Internet and release it until April 30, 1993, so Doogie’s journal wasn’t technically a blog, but you get the idea.
Although by no means the only one, WordPress, the most popular blogging platform, was not released for 10 more years, back on May 27th, 2003. During that time there have been many players. Anyone remember LiveJournal, Blogspot, Blogger, Xanga and numerous others? Since that time, many blogging platforms have grown, adapted, morphed, and expanded into full content management systems, otherwise known as a CMS.
Blogging, regardless of its motivation or start, is just producing content. Blogging may have started as a generally cathartic release from the author who may not have been concerned with traffic or readers at the time. Technology has generated a need from most content producers to attract eyeballs and readers with the next progressive step to monetize that viewership.
Let us now venture down a side road briefly on search engines. The obvious gorilla in the room is Google, but there are others, some you would recognize and some you would never label a search engine. The absolute pure purpose of a search engine though is to help the user find content that exists on the Internet and direct them to it.
Here is a short timeline summary:
· 1993 – Internet released to the public
· 1997 – Blogging conceivably starts
· 1997 – Google search engine launched
· 2003 – WordPress version 1 releases
To oversimplify things a bit, blogging with WordPress made it amazingly simple for the average computer user to begin publishing content on the web with regularity without needing to know any HTML or code. I would suggest it is the equivalent of the release of the Gutenberg printing press making the distribution of the written word easy.
Now Back to Our Original Programming… What is Blogging in Digital Marketing
Today, “blogging” is just publishing content on the web. Blogging then becomes a key component of online marketing through a robust content strategy. Lots of people have things to say and it does not matter if what they talk about is personal or business. With so much content getting published every day, we rely on search engines to index (another word for review) it and make it easy for anyone to find it online.
If blogging is just publishing content online to be found by someone, then publishing quality content should be the next step. Publishing content that is helpful and informative on a regular basis should be a key part of a business’s marketing strategy.
The next important aspect to be considered then is the importance of SEO or optimizing all that quality content so that search engines understand it and index it in the most effective methods possible. There is lots of confusion, mistrust, and disbelief in SEO, but that’s a topic for another day for sure.
At R Creative, we can assist you with not only developing a content marketing strategy for your website, but also coaching you in creating that content, writing, and publishing that content for you, as well as optimizing the content and your website for the best indexing potential for your website.
