Is Blogging Really on the Decline?

An article on Mashable today discussed a study by Pew Internet that broke down the online activities by age groups, starting with as young as 18 and working up to 74+.

Many of the results were not surprising. Email was an almost uniform activity across every age group, as were searching and getting news online. Also, younger individuals were more likely to play games online, IM and use social networks while their slightly older cohorts were more likely to visit government sites and check financial information.

All in all, the younger the respondent, the more activities they likely did online, though it seemed almost no one was using virtual worlds.

However, one thing that did catch some off guard was the decline in blogging. Not only was blogging an unpopular activity across all age groups, less than 10% said they blogged and less than half said they read blogs (with younger respondents having the highest percentage), there was a marked decline from the previous year's survey.

Many will undoubtedly look at this and see dark things in the future for blogging. However, the truth is likely much different and there are very simple reasons for the numbers and why they aren't very important.

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The Blogosphere is Alive with the Sound of Marketers

While Twitter and Facebook are all the rage with your average internet user, blogs are still going strong in the corporate world.

According to a study by eMarketer, 34% of all US companies have a public blog and they project 45% by 2012. That’s up tremendously from 2007 which lands at only 16%.

“Studies have shown that marketers perceive blogs to have the highest value of any social media in driving site traffic, brand awareness, lead generation and sales—as well as improving customer service.”

The study suggests that there is a larger number of blogs devoted to smaller companies, where larger companies may be lagging due to legal and logistical issues. It’s a lot easier for George to upload an off-the-cuff blog post when he’s the CEO of a two man company than it is for a VP at Procter and Gamble to make his thoughts known.

One of the biggest benefits of blogging over micro-blogging is the evergreen nature. A blog post is searchable and indexable as long as blog site shall live. That means consumers can easily revisit the information a month from now or a year from now. Try doing that with a Facebook post or a Twitter message that’s more than a month old.

Ideally, a combination of social media messaging is the way to go. A Twitter tweet leads readers to the blog post which leads them on to the Facebook via a “like” button at the top of the post. Of course, for all of this to work as it should, you have to have something interesting to say and that’s the hardest part of blogging.

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