It’s Not You…It’s Me - The Great Business Blogging Breakup

Today has been a typical Monday for me.  I have had a few companies that were on board with blogging for their businesses, pull back and cancel contracts. Yes, I have now had the “it’s not you… it’s me” speech given to me twice in as many days.  This is not good news for a small company like mine, and especially for the bloggers that I have contracts with it means for a tough holiday season.  I always hated breaking up, especially when they were breaking up with me!

I can see a pattern to something that is beginning to make me think that the economy is hitting even the professional blogging industry.  In some respects there has been an increase in companies seeking ways to help reduce their marketing, advertising and other online marketing budgets through the use of outsourcing bloggers.  This helps them reduce the spending they have in those areas yet increase their productivity.  This has kept my phone and email smoking of late from those companies in that camp. In other areas, like for instance in the larger companies with larger budgets, I’m seeing the opposite.  It’s time to shed the ballast is their minds.  What is considered ballast?  Anything that is not nailed down.   Employees and departments that were once hiring professional bloggers in the field are tightening their belts and putting their noses to the grindstone. It is time to protect them and their own.  Department heads are having to do with 10 what they used to do with 15 people.  What was once considered a luxury of having money to pay someone to blog, department heads are now having to do for themselves, or worse yet, not at all.

Businesses in this economy are going back to what has worked for them in the past. Blogging is too young to pass that test.

It is the “not at all” that most concerns me in the immediate future.  Businesses in this economy are going back to what has worked for them in the past. Blogging is too young to pass that test.  Those things that have garnered them the attention online, and something that has shown a definite return on investment are what they are doing.  Why?  In their minds blogging is still too early to give credit to and until they can show its benefit it will be put on the shelf.  They are going back to what was working when they had to have it, what was needed to survive, what they cold prove was a benefit.  When times are tough, we always fall back on what worked before.  We go back to the well that was producing.  In this case, we are going to see a bump in the areas of pay-per-click campaigns or those things that have “metrics”.  Google will be where people go for their marketing and advertising.  Their last Adsense campaign seemed to increase their revenues, and when they were questioned by the powers above they could show hard numbers on conversions as click-thrus and those crunching the numbers were able to give it value.  Blogging is too much like business voodoo when it comes to showing the CFO why you are spending that precious dollar on a blog post.  They cannot see what possible benefit can come from someone reading about your mission statement, or about your company’s latest cool news item.  They want to see a pie chart for every dollar spent.  Blogging is just not the right fit for that type of thinking.  SEO professionals will again be relied upon to work their tricks, but as some have revealed, that wand may also be out of magic.  It is too early to tell what will happen in the professional blogging industry.  As I stated before, business is still good and many companies are still looking to hire bloggers to do the work they themselves cannot.  I for one hope that is the continuing trend, otherwise I need to get that Twitterers For Hire URL nailed down.