Blogging is so yesterday, right?

If by “blog” you mean a platform for distributing sharp headlines and meaningful messages across the online media landscape, then blogs are now. In fact, social media is giving it even more life.

Using blogging technology to help your site

Blogs are a way to export your site’s content and message to an audience beyond traditional search. Creating a quick blog post and clicking Publish can instantly update several of your social media accounts while adding fresh content to your site, keeping search engines happy.

Since a blog uses syndication technology, it’s the perfect vehicle to spread your message. And since social networking sites readily accept this technology (Facebook, Twitter, and others.), there is an opportunity to feed certain social networking sites with content that contains catchy headlines and links to the original site, your site.

Remember, the purpose of social media optimization is to drive traffic from sources other than search engines. The creative use of blogging technology allows just that.

What was blogging?

When John Marshall created The Talking Points Memo in 2000, blogging was in its infancy. Two years later, his blog led the charge against US Senator Trent Lott, who suggested the country would have been better off had Strom Thurmond, an advocate of racial segregation, been elected president. Lott was forced to resign, and blogs became an immediate source of current news. They were genuine, non-homogenized, and capable of effecting change.

Blogs became big business. Writers wrote, advertisers paid, and readers enjoyed it all. In the early days of blogging, many bloggers could get their posts to appear in search engine results. Not anymore, unless it’s a subject so arcane that it’s close enough to the end of the long tail to risk being thrown off.

As other forms of social networking emerged, personal expression on the Web became much easier. Users found that they could search for images and videos on their hard drives, upload them, tag them, include a message, and enjoy the viral effects of the online community.

what is blogging

Blogging is still big business. Blog strongholds like The Talking Points Memo, The Huffington Post, Hot Air, Mashable, BoingBoing, PerezHilton offer the level of coverage and expertise we expect from mainstream news sources. And thousands of blogs are still relevant with a little help from blog search services like Technorati and Google Blog Search.

While blogging has left us with many legacies, the greatest of them may not be any particular blog. It’s the technology that supports them, the technology that allows us to spread our thoughts, updates, marketing messages and whatever else across the Web.

What’s under the hood?

Blogs originally used a technology called Really Simple Syndication, or RSS. You’ve seen the little orange logo. Many blogging services now use a more robust XML-based format called Atom. Technobabble, maybe. But what you need to know is that regardless of the format, many simply refer to it as RSS, the Kleenex of web syndication technologies. As far as getting your message out, any blog technology is a Klaxon.