It is worth setting out why I think Blogging is the best format for the publication of my OxfordInciter site and for anything else - products, services or opinions - which must be promoted cost-effectively to a wide audience.
I have been collecting the source material - the facts, photographs and opinions - used here for 20 years or so, unclear whether it would be used as the basis for a history of some aspect of Oxford, a documentary book about the decline of democracy, or a comic novel about bureaucrats pushing pens, shuffling paper and wasting taxpayers' money.
The Blog format is perfect for a mixture of long-term studies and current news and views, with the bonus of being able to collect new information and views from others.
Web site design is part of my business, along with other aspects of the promotion of businesses, including my own. I had viewed Blogging as an activity of marginal interest for business, a currency debased before it really began (so I thought) by legions of introspective semi-literates cluttering up the Web with their irrelevant chatter. Several things came together to make me try it.
Alan Yentob and the Long Tail
A television programme by Alan Yentob in December 2006 explored the rise of Blogging as an opinion-forming and trend-setting medium. He surveyed other ways in which technology devised for one purpose had been appropriated for other. Amongst other points of interest, he described the "long tail" of influence which means that large numbers of small, distributed participants can count for as much as a smaller number of big players. His immediate context was commercial - millions of small buyers spending as much as a handful of big ones - but the principle applies equally to opinions. You no longer need an expensive advertising campaign to reach millions - a successful Blog, neural advertising, a few seconds of video on YouTube - can reach much further and becomes self-propagating. Yentob did not invent the concept of the long tail, but since his description of it I see it, and references to it, everywhere
Richard Susskind and the Future of Law
Professor Richard Susskind is an academic-cum-business guru well known in legal circles for his predictions as to the effect of technology on the business of law - not just the efficiencies which it can bring to the doing of the work but the fundamental effects on every aspect to generating business, undertaking it and delivering the product or service.
He had the lawyers rolling in the aisles ten years ago with his predictions that they would communicate by e-mail, and would promote themselves and actually transact business on the Web and so on. Much of what he predicted has come to pass, so we must take note when he says that Blogging, music down-loading, Wikis, open source software and Internet Chat will move into the mainstream.
Clive James
Clive James is a man with nothing to prove in the world of communication. With books, newspapers, and television conquered, he has turned in old age to the Web as a medium for getting his opinions across.
I found www.clivejames.com by accident, whilst researching the history of traffic in Oxford High Street (I will revert in a moment to the significance of that accident). His introduction describes the site as "the first personal multimedia extravaganza of its type" and a "free university having a love affair with a space station" and in similar terms all a little overblown for my taste. Cutting through the hyperbole, however, the gist of it is that he thinks that he has something to say and to show which reflects his tastes and his views, and wants to provide it in a form which will outlive him.
Although he hopes that a few books might be sold as a result, that is secondary to the wish to leave a record and secondary also (one feels) to a curiosity as to the medium and the ability to bring text, pictures, video and sound recordings on to a single platform.
It is a web site rather than a Blog, but there is nothing on it which a Blog cannot deliver. I don't much like the look or feel of it - big paragraphs, justified right and left in newspaper style in small light grey type on a white background, with a serendipitous index and no means of navigating back to the Home Page.
These are details. His wish to capture and promulgate what he likes fits with my own wish to get down what I think (in my case largely about Oxford and its governance) using whatever medium seems right for the subject-matter. Like James, I want to influence people, and profit is secondary to the wish promulgate my opinions.
The medium and the primary driver may be much the same as Clive James's but there are differences. I want to go beyond mere opinion-forming and to fire people up to take action to defend something I feel strongly about. I may be interested in the medium - the Web and everything it brings - but mainly because of the potential to harness it to wider purposes. And making a living from it is not - or was not when I started - the main point of the exercise.
Google and the pursuit of profit
I spend a lot of time working to get web sites found in web searches and I have reasonable success in doing this. The Grail here is Google, which accounts for 75% of UK searches. Many factors influence a web site's ranking in Google - more than 100 of them it is said, but no-one is really sure what they all are and which of them is most important. One of them is said to be longevity - however well constructed your site, Google likes to see that a site has been around a bit before indexing it all.
I am no more privy to Google's algorithms than any other web site designer who has done his research and applied it. I do know, however, that I can get a relatively new site to come up on page one in Yahoo and Altavista more quickly than I can in Google and that this is true of more than the Home Page.
Blogs are a different matter. I have just searched for a specialist term relevant to my business in Google's Blog search. I get four hits for my Blog, two of which are dated less than 24 hours ago on a Blog which has existed for less than a week. Technorati (a specialist Blog search) produced five articles, all less than 24 hours old, two of which were on page one of a list with 3,594 entries. Those articles in turn point back to my main web site.
This is powerful stuff. It was not effortless, nor was it accidental - I have the primary skills from my web site work, I researched the methodology and I applied it. Whilst skill and time played its part, the achievement is that of the available technology
Conclusion
I said I would revert to how I found Clive James whilst researching traffic in Oxford's High Street. The anniversary of Suez (British government invents pretext for war, concocts the evidence to justify it, makes secret deals with foreign powers and lies about it to Parliament - where have we heard that before?) reminded me of the story that the Cabinet adjourned a meeting at the height of the crisis to put the kybosh on a scheme to put a road through Christ Church Meadow.
My Google search brought up a review by Clive James of a biography of Richard Crossman who was referred to as having had a hand in cancelling the scheme. So I was brought to a web site of which I knew nothing by a search for something entirely peripheral to its main purpose.
Add that to the concept of the "long tail" - the masses, individually powerless, who can be influenced - and whose reciprocal influence can be harnessed - to equal or defeat the influence of greater powers; bring in Susskind's application of personal or minority technology to mainstream business purposes; consider the speed with which one can get a Blog entry to be found if you do it right.
The upshot is a powerful marketing tool and a whole new way of getting one's view - or products - out into the market. if I started this with the aim merely of finding a platform for views I wish to promulgate, I have found a product of my own to sell.
If you would like to discuss how I could help you promote your business, please complete the form below and I will get back to you very quickly.
Chris Dale
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