We Need Strong Blog Networks for Reasons Beyond Money

The intellectual value that blogs and bloggers bring as info-media is immense in India. They present thought leadership not only with regards to their own niches but of blogging as a powerful medium as a whole. At a certain point of time the Indian blogosphere was the new measure of intelligentsia of the country.  However for reasons that vary from exhaustion to newer tools to a general lack of ideas blogs haven’t gone beyond the mainstream peak they seemed to have reached back in early 2000 s.

The number of bloggers in India have gone up for sure, which perhaps is the reason many popular bloggers began to shift to newer media like Twitter for self expression and continue their early adopter aura. So while the numbers improved the influence to a certain extent decreased. This however is a debatable point, and anyway doesn’t hold considerable value in the actual topic of this post.

What does hold a lot of value though is the stagnation that blogs are stuck in since quite a while. How we blogged 7 years back and how we do now has not seen any considerable difference except for newer designs and platforms. This when globally blogs have been spearheading the new publication wave and real time information and analysis. While there are a lot of blogs that might be doing it, none of them (including this humble blog here) has achieved mainstream glory to the point of being a social influence.

And this is where I think blog networks can add value. When we say social media is going to change the way brands and conversations and marketing is going to happen, blogs as an integral part of the social sphere need to get more organized. And blog networks are the answer to that need. A prudent blog network can bring out among other things

• A more professional blogging experience,
• Better content therefore, better marketing because of organization and value,
• Better methods of training for continuance of blogs as information repositories

Of course there is the money angle, a blog network can command better rates for which they can offer better value and numbers to advertisers. Obviously this would also mean better returns for bloggers who can then provide more time and effort to blogging which is better for the blog. Marketing can be better using the various topics at hand for niche targeting and using each others real estate for cross promotion on a larger level.

It is a pity that weblogs network sold for millions of dollars way back in 2005 and we are still at a stage where a blog publisher can barely earn a decent living through blogging alone even now.

What blog publishers need to do is unite, we need blog leadership to emerge from the plethora of bloggers around who can consolidate the space. While ad networks targeting niche blogs and bringing them under a common monetary umbrella is good, it is not the right dose for the Indian blogosphere at the moment. It is about time the talent found aplenty is organized and professionalized to improve public perception of blogging. Then the opinions and views and the analysis will begin to hold a lot more weight in the society which further propels the role blogs will play in new media as new media.