Is Blogging The Future Of Publishing?
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are growing so fast that the numbers are a blurrrrrrr…….
If you want to look up something to buy or research you will Google.
What if you are passionate about technology, politics, fashion or cycling and you want to find out the latest trends? You will quite often find yourself going to a blog where the author or tribe of authors are also passionista’s… or maybe just slightly obsessed. They will be genuine, authentic and maybe opinionated but you will be confronted in most cases with the latest reality of that particular niche or micro niche.
Some say it is fading in the face of the social media tsunami and it is passe. I think that in fact the social media universe just amplifies and spreads the influence of blogs through the Digital “World of Mouth”.
Blogging is publishing, it is content, and that can be a video, images, text or all of these. Blogging is about niches and allows those that are passionate about their interests to start publishing and sharing online and through promotion drive traffic, eyeballs and then revenue.
Before the development of the internet and mass media, people gathered in clubs that met in agoras (town squares), school halls and community centres to share their knowledge about their interests and hobbies. We now gather in front of screens to learn, share and collaborate in the “Global” town square. The small niche in your village or town could be counted on the fingers of one hand. That niche globally could be in the millions.
Here is the monthly traffic graph for the worlds “Number One” political blog, The “Huffington Post” (37.6 Million hits for the month of March, 2010)
The “Huffington Post” is certainly a blog superpower but the numbers for blogs in some other niches is certainly significant. A niche magazine would give their right arm for this many eyeballs viewing their pages every month (Here are the traffic figures for March, 2010 for the blogs listed below).
· Mashable – 5.16 Million views (Technology Blog)
· Nymag.com - 3.4 million views (Entertainment Blog)
· BoingBoing.com – 3.1 Million views (Cultural curiosities and interesting technologies Blog)
· Businessinsider.com – 2.8 Million views (Business Blog)
· Inhabitat.com – 656,000 views (Environmental Blog)
Blogging is the democratization of publishing. It allows anyone to publish easily and freely and at low cost and it is becoming a serious business. Blogging is becoming the niche powerhouse of publishing and advertisers will pay good money to market to a tightly targetted and qualified market. What will this publishing landscape look like in 10 years?
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