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According to a direct marketing copywriter Robert Bly the answer is no, as blogs are a big waste of time. Oh good. I am glad that’s sorted. Now I can go back to my boring job in the City instead of wasting time on this crazy blog stuff.

Anyway, many have descended on the clueless marketer. Rick E. Bruner does a splendid fisking of the guy’s verbiage:

Blog ROI. He cracks me up. For starters, this is like arguing religion or politics to try to talk to an die-hard direct marketer about anything one click-through removed from a sale. Why not talk ROI about public relations or public speaking or customer service or brand advertising, for that matter.

My sentiments precisely. Then he marshals a long list of blogs that are far from waste of time… Will be bookmarking that one.

Steve Hall’s headline gives away his opinion: Copywriter Misunderstands Weblogs, Feels Threat to Livelihood He also picks up on an interesting point that is very telling indeed:

Bly digs himself in even deeper, “And that’s another of my complaints with blogs in particular and the Web in general: the ease with which people can post and disseminate content.”

Mr. Bly one of the most powerful things the weblog publishing platform does is enable many voices to be heard. It’s called Citizen’s Media. Why should voice a opinion be limited in any way? We can certainly understand why that might threaten your multi-million dollar annual fees earned by writing all those overpriced newsletters for major corporations.

Indeed.