The Blog Epidemic

Today, blogs are the latest form of entertainment. People use blogs for advice, fashion tips, how-to’s, politics, the list keeps on going. You name it, there’s a blog for it. Why the sudden increase in blog use, you may ask yourself? Blogs (such as this one) are opinionated commentaries by individuals that are as credible as it gets in the publication world. Usually, when one thinks of the word ‘credible’, The New York Times or National Geographic comes to mind, but what I mean by credible is that blogs are raw opinions people have on a multitude of subjects. According to Brand Week, in comparison to paid advertisements, “paying advocates- even passionate ones- tend to undercut their credibility.” Meaning word of mouth (blogs) is more believable. So this contribution being my opinion, I find blogging to be the most interesting thing to do while surfing the web. I actually started my own blog recently called Polish & Pistachios and it’s my pride and joy. Furthermore, blogs are effective because of the word of mouth effect it has on people. For instance, my friend told me about Cupcakes and Cashmere (which is my favorite blog now) and I told my friends and they told their friends, and so forth. Of course, this trend doesn’t just occur with fashion blogs, but blogs about business or services that can ultimately affect a business in a positive or negative way. Nowadays, it’s easy to track the traffic of your blog, how many impressions you get, where your viewers come from, at what time of the day they are more likely to read it etc. This makes it even easier to make your blog appeal to your viewers and, ultimately, get your message across to as many people as possible. Now this doesn’t mean you will be able to track how much word of mouth is affecting the public, but it does give you a rough estimate.