Hugh Macleod says that blogs may be considered [by some media pundits] as a dying form of expression, with Twitter, Facebook, Digg and other micro formats on the rise, but for some people, blogs are still a powerful medium:
So that’s why I have a blog, I suppose. I like the control. I write something, I post it, it gets read, hopefully good things happen as a result, somewhere on this small blue planet of ours. Unlike a book or a movie or a TV commercial, there’s no waiting around for somebody else to greenlight it. The only light is the greenlight.
A blog can be the primary marketing tool of the free-agent or micro-business. It is cheap, simple and can have a far reach. My blog is the only time and money I spend that could be defined as “marketing”. I don’t pay for advertising, I don’t pay to get a speaking gig and I don’t even hang up a sign (not really necessary in Sackville).
This blog, started in February 2004, now has +1,000 posts and +2,000 comments.
Depending on which statistics software I use, I get somewhere between 5,000 and 30,000 actual visitors per month, which doesn’t include anyone reading my posts in an RSS aggregator or all the bots and stuff. That is more reach than I could possibly have purchased in advertising. Like Hugh, I really appreciate the fact that I can publish something immediately, or even time-delayed, without waiting for permission, approval or the presses to start.
Vive le blogue libre!
