OK So it’s February now, and I’m still arranging my thoughts.
Blogging is Dead: Of course it is! It has been dead for years and keeps on dying again and again. But no one has told Blogging that it is dead and it just won’t lie down long enough to have a funeral Mass and be buried.
Because you see, it’s not. It continues to live and now is various ways. This (here on Hi) is blogging - but it’s sort of not. Yet it retains all the elements of Blogging. There is Svbtle - again a brand new modernised … erm … blogging system. And Blogger, Wordpress etc (the Next Web only 6 months ago listed the 15 best - not all http://thenextweb.com/apps/2013/08/16/best-blogging-services/#!ugzgE) chug on as do their authors.
Have Facebook and short-form blogging platforms (yes Twitter is “blogging”) broken Blogging? In my experience on the www.WIMPS.tv website, where we expected to have comments (using Disqus) we get comments on Facebook. We publish on our website, promote on Facebook (and others) but the comments are largely off our site and somewhere else. But hey! We get the comments, we get the engagement. So let a thousand flowers bloom - even if they are not in the intended garden.
Here is a good idea I plan to steal from Euan Semple. Write your blog, then copy and paste onto Facebook. Simple.
Guest blogging is dead: If you are doing it for PageRank - well yes it is. But that was never a good idea. If you have a blog and you want to enrich it with other voices, then Guest Blog away. It’s good practice. Just don’t do it to manipulate stats. SOE has a bad enough rep anyway (who you going to trust, Journalist, Estate Agent, SEO consultant —- no thanks, I really don’t need snake-oil today.)
Corporate Blogging is … “Back with a vengeance”: So says corpcommsmagazine.co.uk You know, I’ve always both liked and despised corporate blogging. I like and admire it when it is the true voice of the person credited as the author. Sadly I have met too many “journalists” who have told me they are the person who writes the CEO’s blog. “How do you engage with people who comment?” I invariably ask. “Oh, we don’t have the comments section open.” is oft the reply. THAT”S NOT BLOGGING! (opps, sorry for that capitalised outburst).
Good corporate blogging is a 21st century essential. If the CEO is the true author and does engage personally rather than acting as a god above and talking to the people through a priestly intermediary - then that it to be celebrated.
Anyway - it’s February now. What more trials and sorrows must blogging suffer? None really - it is healthy and fit and moulding itself to the needs of the author and reader - like it should.
3 weeks and 2 to go until Slovenia. Tonight in Kranjska Gora something's happening. Ascreen shot from the webcam.
Gray today
Sometimes it's just too hard to get out of the car. Friday morning in the rain after a late night.
Day off following a long Saturday with potential young political leaders from all over Ireland.
Are ther any other people in Belfast/Northern Ireland on SayHi?
Well the waiting is over ... now is the time to discover what it is I have been waiting for.