Why blogging matters

— Published January 9th, 2003  |  by David Moore

The rise of blogging to become a standard part of the Internet landscape is a perfect illustration of both the opportunities and challenges of online content.

What started as a grassroots set of jottings, links, and diary entries is now ubiquitous on the Web, and Google recently acquired Pyra Labs, the company behind Blogger - one of the most popular systems for managing a blog.

The best blogs (from 'web log') are perfect examples of why good content is so crucial online: they offer timely, well-written information targeted at a particular audience. Daypop offers a valuable selection of blog resources (from search features to rankings), to give you an idea of the range of topics and styles out there.

This communication is supported by simple technology making it easy to post entries - blogs are content driven, not feature driven, unlike many over-elaborate sites.

But blogs' challenges are also those of content as a whole - they have to be interesting, well-written, focused, and updated regularly. There are thousands of blogs that don't make it past the third issue, or are little more than the blogger talking to themselves.

These general rules on the success of blogs are applicable to all content creation online, but there are also some specific lessons for those whose jobs involve content.

Firstly, maybe you should be blogging yourself. While blogs started as personal rants or favourite links of the day, more and more organisations are seeing the benefits of regular communication that is immediate and more informal than a newsletter.

In a recent ClickZ article, Kahtleen Goodwin argued, 'A few savvy businesses have caught on to the fact blogs essentially present an opportunity to build communities where like-minded people gather to establish interactive dialogues on issues of their choice. And in the business world, large communities gather. "Business-blogs," or "b-blogs" (a term I coined here and now), are perfect for the corporate world.'

Secondly, even if you don't want to create a business blog, you can certainly use blogging technology on your site as a simple CMS. Systems such as Blogger and Movable Type make it very easy to manage parts of a site that need regular updating, and they're both flexible and customisable.

The events in Iraq have prompted a massive increase in visits to blogging sites, as people look for a range of perspectives on the war outside the mainstream media. Blogs are here to stay, and their success is a testament to the fundamental importance of quality content online.