Blogging takes work. Social media takes work, too. But it’s so much shinier and prettier that it’s becoming an easier case for marketing managers to make.

A recent article in USA Today points to more companies quitting their blogging efforts in favor of Facebook and Twitter.

Who can blame them?

Blogging takes work. It’s like watching public television. Social media takes work, too. It’s like watching “Dancing with the Stars.”

Writers like blogging, and blogging likes writers

If your organization is lucky enough to have:

• a good message
• a stable of strong writers
• a community of people who enjoy reading what you write

then blogging will go a long way for you. But if you become weak in any of those, as most organizations eventually do, then your online marketing will have to shift to the snackable content that is social media.

In that case, don’t fight it. According to the article, Bank of America, Owens Corning, Sport Chalet and OkCupid don’t. “We want to be where our customers are,” says a BofA spokesman, mentioning Twitter and Facebook.

Among other reasons to bail on a blog:

• underestimating the amount of work a blog requires
• worrying about legal or regulatory trouble from saying the wrong thing and not being able to take it back
• not connecting with readers, usually because of the urge to pitch products

Face it: there are easier ways to spend a precious marketing buck.

Keeping the air in the tires

Still, no matter how you spend that marketing buck, you need to put out valuable content to your audience. You can fill only so many tweets and posts with emoticons and exclamation marks before you have to start linking to content that gives your readers something to think about. So in effect, you’ll be blogging one way or the other, even if not in WordPress.

Among other reasons to keep waving the flag of blogging and valuable content:

• establishing expertise in your industry
• showing that you’re paying attention to your customers’ problems and not just to how cool your products are
• search-engine-friendliness (at least, for the time being)

Don’t take my word for it; have a look at the array of comments under Roger Yu’s article in USA Today. As you would suspect, most of them favor blogging over social media, but for different reasons.

Facebook, blogging, Twitter, LinkedIn…As a marketing manager, how do you make the case for where your organization will invest in online marketing?

photo credit: Vicky Brock