The trend is relatively easy to identify. One example is that numerous once-headlining Manchester-based blogs are now retired, semi-retired or left incontinently filling their off-the-shelf CSS templates with mediocre PR fluff from RSS feeds. A quick click through this list of Mancunian blogs will reveal that for many of them the lights are on but there has been quite literally no-one at home for some considerable time.
Some examples:
The Mancubist (missing presumed disinterested since 22 Sept 2010)
GastroGrrl (missing presumed dieting since 23 Aug 2010)
Lady Levenshulme (27 August 2010)
Rentergirl (evicted January 2011)
Diary of a Bluestocking (August 2010)
Your Call Is Very Important To Us (not that important since June 2010)
Yes, I Will Hold (actually, no I won't since July 2010)
etc... etc...
...and here are some examples of those who have at least had the good manners to say goodbye before relocating - for no readily apparent reason - to another blog address:
Concrete and flowers (fled for greener pastures Feb 2011)
The Fairy Tale Cupboard (flitted away Jan 2011)
Lost In Manchester (signed off May 2011, and a damn shame too)
I have not included the many that began as 'proper' blogs but have steadily replaced original content with links to other people's work (but yes, I am looking at you, Sarah Hartley).
How could this be? We have been told for years that Web 2.0 has emancipated an entire generation of creative writers and artists who can now self-publish their work. So why have so many of them simply stopped without so much as a final "farewell, dear readers"? I think it's safe to say the novelty has worn off, interest waned and many bloggers have become frustrated with their low audience statistics and lack of comments or feedback, not to mention their awareness of just how many tens of thousands of people are self-publishing writing, music and art which is a good deal better than their own.
But while this could account for the decline in personal blogs what of Social Media? Wasn't SM supposed to enhance this self-publishing and self-promotion trend? Why isn't it working? In Manchester it's probably fair to say that the Social Media Café has made the most noise about all this but it appears to have devolved into little more than a small cabal of unimaginative marketeers, as I wrote here.
Social Media was imagined to be the wind in the sails of Digital Development in Manchester but it now looks like it may have had its day. A small minority of the populace use it merely to augment certain personal aspects of their lives (linking Flickr pix to their Facebook pages for instance), and those marketeers who tried to establish SM as a paradigm for the entire Web 2.0-based future have quietly retreated behind anonymous and unread blogs fed by other anonymous unread blogs fed by third- and fourth-hand RSS feeds generated for the most part by the youngest and most inexperienced people sitting in cheap-looking office units that masquerade as 'newsrooms' all over the city.
What is becoming apparent (and perhaps in hindsight should have been blindingly obvious) is that no-one wants to keep seeing the same old RSS feeds on every single blog they visit. One cannot underestimate the impact of well-produced, original content on the popularity of a blog, but many Social Media marketeers strongly suggest to their clients that all you need for your business is a nice-looking CSS site with a sprinkling of Search Engine Optimisation (all of which they will sell you) and then a Medusa's head of RSS feeds which will keep your homepage looking "fresh". This is nothing more than a tired old marketing strategy that involves using every trick and subterfuge to keep luring customers back again and again in the hope that they will spend more money. But guess what? Customers are not going to keep coming back every day to your hotel's website because your Flickr photostream has updated some blurry shots of the Chef's Special from Friday night... They will only visit your site - briefly - for just two reasons: to get contact information or to book a table. That's all.
By now many businesses have learned that their all-singing all-RSS-feeding sites are just not performing, and that unless they keep those Flickr streams and Your Comments streams truly engaging and fresh then in fact those same feeds actively damage their image, making their sites look outdated and uncared for. The solution to this involves paying for talented, engaging writers, not witless marketeers. It requires photographers, not a subscription account with a stock photo library service. With the decline in the numbers of businesses upgrading or buying into this idea, the marketing companies themselves are finally feeling the pinch, and some of their own sites are now lying pole-axed, a semblance of life suggested only by the spasmodic twitching of an RSS feed of Forum Comments from six weeks ago, or a cycle-loop of five photographs from an event at the beginning of the year.
However, amongst these exquisite corpses can be found organisations like this still hanging in there. This company includes the following helpful definition of Social Media Marketing:
There's lots of hype and hyperbole about social media marketing. Much of it very well deserved. But what's so new that many commentators are calling it a 'revolution in marketing communications'? (There goes that social media hype again!)Hype is hypebole and lazy PR speak with rhetorical questions like this is so old it is almost beyond cliché. How can a company that depends on its ability to use language publish something as poor as this? And yet on the same company's Digital PR and Corporate Blogging page, the writing style changes completely. So much so I was driven to Google some of its key sentences such as this one:
Blogs enable you to articulate your viewpoints, knowledge and expertise on matters pertaining to your industry.If you do the same (or just use the link above) you will find the same definition on numerous marketing websites. The oldest I could see was this one from an article written in 2005. So what we have here is again a demonstration of how cynical and naïve these entities are. Cynical in that they are still proudly claiming to be able to help customers create a dynamic and engaging 'corporate blog' by insisting on original copy (produced and written by their good selves of course), whilst simultaneously pasting any old copy onto their own site. Naïve in that they think no-one will ever notice.
