Comments on: 4 Steps to Actually Blog without Blogging

By: Justin King

Justin King — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:14:09 +0000

Interesting post and comments. SEO content and all that is good - don’t get me wrong. However, I blog because it helps me, my team, and my clients distill all of the content that is out there - in my case through the eyes of a B2B marketer. If I write something and/or regurgitate the information, it seems to stick. It also helps all involved keep a common vocabulary and concepts. Love that other people read my blog, don’t get me wrong - and I want more But for the true thought leaders, they share information because they are passionate about it.

By: Dave J.

Dave J. — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 01:35:47 +0000

I had the same conversation with a friend… Start reading, commenting until you may feel led to do more, and find your voice. Developing relationships is much more valuable and motivating than SEO value.

And we really need more commenters out there anyway.

By: Lindsay Willott

Lindsay Willott — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 09:54:14 +0000

It’s struck me for a while now that blogging, and in fact the wider “2.0″ type tools are simply a way of delivering what we all considered to the the holy grail of online comms about ten years ago.

I distinctly remember being sat in meeting rooms in 1998 with marketing colleagues, talking about how we needed to look “busy” on our website, “engaged with the debate on our industry” how we needed to keep people coming back (the lovely concept that is stickiness) and how we needed to offer value to our website visitors quickly.

And yet time and again companies churned out “brochureware” websites that never changed from the moment they were set live. And they never reached out to the people they were trying to influence.

Why? Lack of ownership by content-generators - they were all owned by webmasters instead. So a big cheer for blogs - finally the people who create the content can get it out on the web. And the best content has grows legs and wanders off all on its own.

My advice to your would-be blogger? Ask your potential customers what information they really want, (you could use LinkedIn for this too) investigagte and write only one piece of superb content a month, and only then use the different media to promote it (tweet it, blog it, stick in on your email footer - whatever really). Add to the debate wisely and it will benefit you in the long run.

By: Rick Burnes

Rick Burnes — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 04:06:47 +0000

I agree that blogging is a lot of work, but I don’t think the four steps you suggest taking equate to blogging.

Above all, if you’re not consistently generating keyword-rich content, you’re not going to get the SEO benefit that blogging brings. After blogging regularly over the course of a year, a decent blogger should be able to generate traffic from a significant number of long-tail searches. This is free traffic that anybody who is just commenting, hosting a static website or operating on social networks will not have.