Enter the blogospere without a blog

This week, a memo circulated inside  my agency about starting a new blog for one of our clients. On that same day, we sat around coming up with ideas for another client, and one of them was start a new blog.

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There are 200,000,000 blogs.

Are we really talking about having another one? Again, both initiatives come from rather high-up people. In the first instance, it’s the CEO who wants insights into blogging. The second one, has it’s own complications, partly due to the fact that it’s an agency job, and so the time commitment will be hard to muster.

(And anyway, the best advice to a would-be blogger is to tell them to write the first 10 posts. By the tenth (assuming they make it to ten), they will know if they can blog)

However, in both instances, there isn’t a need to have a blog to enter the world of blogs. In fact, to comment on this blog post, you only need a WordPress login (not a WordPress blog.) And WordPress automatically tracks all of your comments on other WordPress blogs.

Additionally, there are new services like Disqus, that will allow you to create a commenting profile, and comment on blogs with Disqus installed (mine isn’t Disqus ready, but it’s WordPress ready.

Again, depending on the market, these two tools can replace the need to blog by simply commenting on blogs. The aforementioned CEO can create the CEO profile and comment. On Disqus, on WordPress, etc. The website he enters in the comment feild can be his website. If he really has something to say, he can say it.

We’re marketers, so we tend to think ‘Talk To’ first. In the blogosphere, it’s not a bad idea to think ‘Respond To’ first.

Because really, who needs another blog?

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