Bloggers Are People, Too

The Post-Dispatch ran an opinion piece of mine in today's paper on the importance of blogs to modern discourse.  It's actually a response to the opinion piece of another St Louisan, who asked if bloggers couldn't better spend their time working in the community , and less time, uh, opinionating online.

The piece, titled, Don't Paint All Blogger With A Broad, Trivial Brush.

The money paragraph:

All I'm saying is that blogs are a tool for discourse. "Online diary" might have described most blogs five years ago, but today they are much more. Think of them as websites that organize and manage content. They allow non-techies to publish information to the web. Good bloggers also try to connect with other people, both offline and online.

But blogging's greatest assets are its abilities to tap people's curiosity and teach them how to use the Internet as a tool for education. To ignore or dismiss blogs is to shackle your mind and cut yourself off from a wider stream of information.

Last week, I talked to a client who is starting to see results from their recruiting blog.  This was a company that actually jumped into business blogging with no prior experience, and has found candidates from their endeavor.  We're often asked about results (The Recruiting Animal has been pointing out the lack of industry-wide influence we have lately), but all I can say is that people who start blogs see results.  The problem is not enough people are taking them seriously.

If blogs are just the uninformed opinions of nobodies, we would have no readers.  40% of Americans now read blogs, and over 30% of the "influentials" read blogs.  Expect those numbers to grow, as the impact of blogs beyond the lunchroom menu at the high school is discovered.