11/10/2004: "Copywriter Doesn't Like Blogs - Duh."

Bob Bly is a good person and a fine copywriter. He also has written numerous books that have helped many people learn to write and become better writers. That said, Bob does not like online blogs. Shame on you Bob.

Bob gives his reasons for disliking blogs in a recent e-mail dispatch and an article.

He pens, "The first is that most blogs I encounter are rambling, streams-of-consciousness musings about a topic of interest to the author, largely bereft of the practical, pithy tips that e-zines, Web sites and white papers offer." Apparently, Bly has only reader the Xangas and LiveJournals of teenage girls. There are many fine, business focused weblogs with valuable and intelligent content for business professionals published today. For a taste, visit Rick Bruner' s Business Blog Consulting which is a compendium of business weblogs.

Bly then writes, "The second problem involves distribution. With an e-zine, once the reader subscribes, he gets it delivered to him electronically every week or month or however often you send it. But with a blog, the reader has to go out and proactively look for it. And since your contributions to your blog may be irregular and unscheduled, he has no way of knowing when something new of interest has been added." Mr. Bly has obviously never heard of RSS or newsreaders which deliver the content of a weblog, post by post, to a person's desktop in real time without all the baggage in most HTML e-zines. Not to mention the need to sift through spam just to get to the email. By the way, didn't the term "e-zine" go out with the 90's?"

Let me tell you something about blogs. Adrants has knocked many copywriters off Google by its many posts about copywriting. Adrants is a popular blog. What that means is that blogs can help you to rank very high on Google. Is this a good thing for Google? I doubt it because the results you get are not what you are really looking for. If I'm looking for a copywriter, I don't want a bunch of blog entries to read through. So shame on Google.

But the fact is that right now as I write this (and it can change in a hearbeat with Google) blogging is a great way to get high rankings in Google. Adrants knocked me out of one of my best keyword positions as it has other copywriters. Do I think that's bad for searchers? Yes. Is it bad for us real copywriters? Yes. But it's working for the bloggers. Is it getting them business? My guess is it might be. Any time you get traffic, you get some business some times.

Frankly, I have found the results on Google to be poor. I use Yahoo! most of the time and have for years. Most of my business comes from Yahoo! and has for years. Business people started out years ago using Yahoo! and have continued to do so. And the results you get in their searches are good.

But back to the original story, blogs are good for getting high indexing in Google if that's what you're setting out to do. Blogs can and I am sure do get some people business.

I have suspected for awhile now that Bob Bly is a bit out of touch with online marketing in comparison to many other copywriters who study it regularly and do it daily. But he is still and always will be one of the greats.

If you blog or want to blog, do it. Blog on. It just may pay off.