Websites, whitepapers, podcasts, profiles, press releases, emails, blogs, mentions, citations, Tweets, tags, images, video… the list of digital content goes on and on and on. While the heightened focus appears to be on snippets of information in the neighborhood of 140 characters or less, well-developed and well-placed content remains central to building a brand’s visibility and credibility online. Why?

•   Growing consumer control mandates on demand information…if you’re
    missing, you’re forgotten.
•   Pull communication strategies engage an audience on their terms: When,
    where, how and how much they choose to consume your content.
•   Relevant, fresh content still trumps keyword stuffed pages for search
    engine rankings. (Think Twitter, YouTube).

While millions have sprinted to build Facebook pages and Twitter profiles as the hub of their company communications, some have forsaken the marathon of building salient content on the more “traditional” online channels like websites and blogs. With so little control over much of what happens online, particularly across social media (just ask MySpace), the foundation of brand building is best served leveraging communication channels that a business does in fact control: namely its website and blog.

The case for the blog

With more than 49 million WordPress blogs, 400,000 daily posted comments and a population of 289 million reading 2.5 billion pages each month, blogs are alive and well and readership is positioned for growth through 2014: