Is Blog Marketing In Decline?

As someone who has made his living primarily from blog ghostwriting for more than five years now, I’ve got to say that my business has not wavered one bit. OK, to be honest, I did take a slight hit when the economy went south directly after the last presidential election, but it’s held pretty steadily since then and it’s at the save level in terms of sales and client base that it was at before a sharp increase six months prior to the last election. In other words, it grew to a certain point, plateaued, peaked, then fell to the plateau level and has held steady there for nearly three years.

That hardly seems like a decline to me.

But when marketers show statistics like this, it’s hard to ignore the numbers.

My business is not based on Inc. 500 or Fortune 500 players. I cater more to small- and medium-sized businesses. Still, you’d think that blogging was on the decline overall if you based your opinion on these statistics. You’d think that companies are more excited about Facebook and Twitter.

That’s probably true for larger businesses. I think they’re making a big mistake by pursuing a marketing strategy based solely on Facebook and Twitter without blogging. If they were wiser with their investments, I’d say they should drop Facebook and Twitter and pick up blogging (that is, if they want effective marketing on a budget).

I understands budgets, believe me. And I’m not saying that anyone should drop Facebook or Twitter, but you only have so much money to spend on marketing and that’s that. But what will be your most effective marketing vehicle – the popular one that everyone is talking about or the steady one that gets you the best of search engine traction and social media exposure? As someone who has spent a fair amount of time doing both, my pick is the steady and effective blog marketing engine.

Most small businesses can only afford one or the other, if either. My clients have learned to listen to my advice. When they do, they get good results. When they don’t, they end up going somewhere else and eventually return to me asking for my advice again.

Someday, the economy will pick back up again. When it does, you may be able to afford a social media strategy and a steady blog marketing plan. In the meantime, pick the one that shows the most promise in getting you the ROI that you want based on its historical performance ratings. That choice would be blogging.

Is Blogging On The Decline?

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