[0]

Shel of the Red Couch has an excellent post that echoes pretty much what we have been thinking and observing about the evolving blogging phenomenon. This is one of the best descriptions of its impact so far:

I believe, blogging will fundamentally change communications from what it is today to something less controlled and more credible. It has already begun to do so, at a phenomenal rate, and at a time when many industries are dealing with broken business models. For example, traditional publishing--newspapers, magazines and books are all dealing with issues of reduced profitability. Blogging didn’t break their models--the Internet contributed by fragmenting news distribution and by siphoning off ad revenues.

Indeed. As I tried to explain to anyone who will listen, blogs are not changing things/industries/world by themselves, they are merely the first that are using the infrastructure (internet) that has always had the potential to do so. The fundamental shifts within particular industries such as publishing, journalism, PR & marketing are to do more with the very same factors that gave rise to blogging. The ability to communicate, produce and shift large amounts of information has shown up those industries for what they are - industrial era throwbacks forcing old methods onto a changed landscape. Their lack of credibility is not new, we have learnt not to trust adverts and marketing campaigns and regard PR as synonymous with bullshit. It wasn’t blogs that made that so, but they provided a networked platform to spell this out.

“Blog or Die,” someone has charged, represented the same bubble-headedness of the dotcom era, when businesses were told that if they didn’t have a website they would go out of business. Personally, that was sound advice, but too limited. Companies who didn’t have an internet strategy, they were likely to succumb… Companies that wait too long to adapt to fundamental change die. Or, at a minimum they get boxed in. Look at what Amazon.com did online to Barnes & Noble.

Blogs are becoming an increasingly effective alternative that has the potential to replace many traditional communication methods or at least force them to adapt and evolve. Such an alternative is very powerful, as it represents the tipping point for those industries that have boxed themselves in.  If the only way to present yourself to the world is to have that glossy brochure, flashing-banner website or 30 second commercial, companies will pay up or they risk not showing up on their market’s radar at all. This can last only as long as there is no other way. And so, the most revolutionary aspect of blogging seems to me its ability to offer an alternative, not as easy, sleek and packaged, but far more effective and far more affordable, than traditional marketing. It is early days and there is no need to jump into far-reaching and potentially embarassing conclusions. As long as there are companies that are fed up with the traditional marketing and have desire to communicate with their customers and markets, blogs are in business. Let’s keep blogging and see what comes out of the wash…

Or as Shel concludes:

Businesses today need to rethink how they communicate with people who make a difference to them, particularly customers and prospects. How do you feel when you have an important question, and go to the Web site and have to scroll ad nauseam through FAQs, without find an email link or phone number? If you do call, how do you feel listening to the 659 options you need to navigate before you get an actual human who speaks in a language you do not understand? Which do you believe more--an official press release, composed by a committee of mid-level tacticians, or a blog posted by a team of mid-level technicians building products that interest you? Which management team do you trust more. Companies who ignore blogging will die. Blogging will not kill them directly, but companies that ignore blogging will die from linked factors like lost customers and credibility.