Is blogging dead?

This past Saturday, I attended WordCamp Philly. There were four tracks: User, Power User, Designer and Developer. With sessions in the User/Power User tracks such as “BuddyPress: An Enterprise Solution” and “How I Spent the Last 5 years playing with WordPress and building PewResearch.org” you can tell something is up. It’s not really new, but more and more organizations, from nonprofits to multinationals like Coca-Cola, are using WordPress not as a blogging platform, but as a Content Management System (CMS).

A few weeks ago, a well known social media marketing guy posted on Twitter that the effort involved in blogging was too large in relation to the return on investment (ROI).

Many organizations have BINOs: blogs in name only. They don’t update them frequently or haven’t even posted in the last couple of years.

So is blogging dead? Should you give up your blog and just use WordPress to be your website platform?

No!!!!

Blogging is not dead. Blogging still provides many many benefits, not the least of which is making it easier for people to find your organization when they don’t even know it exists.

How many people don’t know Coca-Cola? Coke doesn’t have to do much to be known. But a small organization that works on historical restoration or a business that helps people in a specific area get organized has to work a lot harder.  Small businesses or nonprofits have to provide information that their potential customers or supporters need and want. One of the best ways to provide a constant stream of information is blogging.

Call it content marketing if you must, but blogs are an easy and flexible way to provide opinions, analysis, information, graphics or even podcasts to your audience.

Blogs are social. Blogs let your audience share content easily. And blogs are a way to interact with your audience through the comments. And you can extend your blog’s reach by enlisting guest bloggers.

Even though WordPress is a powerful CMS and even though consistent, quality blogging does take a lot of effort, blogging is still worthwhile.

Are you still blogging? If you have given up, please tell me why in the comments. If you have seen value, give me an example.