Washinton Post columnist, Robert J. Samuelson, has a column in the Denver Rocky Mountain News, Exhibitionism is the name of the game for bloggers.
About 8% of Internet users, or 12 million Americans, blog. And 37% blog about their personal live, according to estimates by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
So what a surprise. People blog because they want to talk about themselves, their projects and their industries. And the newspapers won’t publish your articles more than once or twice a year or your letters to the editor more than once a quarter. They want you to talk to their reporters, who more often than not don’t understand you or your business and are always looking for the sensational angle that will make their stories the ledes for the business secition, if not for page one.
Been there and done that.
Yet, it is humbling that there are so many blogs, even if only 13% are updated daily or weekly, and an even smaller percentage have anything to do with business. I think I’ve seen links to about 50 or 100 finance blogs. There are another 100 or so on marketing.
This is the only blog that I’ve found that is focusing on advertising and marketing independent community banks, credit unions and S&Ls and other financial services. Yes, I blog on related topics that interest me, mostly businesses and marketing issues along with investments, health care and investing.
The key for business bloggers is that if you have a niche, you’ll find an audience, and that audience is likely to do business with you one way or another. I’ve been blogging since Jan. 2003, with a break earlier this year. Most bloggers burn out after one or two posts or a few weeks. So few of the so called 12 million bloggers are active.