The Importance of Social Sustainability in Blogosphere

When a thought comes to our mind; most of us don’t document it - the reasons being aplenty and varied like lack of time, lack of positive energy, lack of communication skills, lack of interest and so on. Some even may shy away from making their thought-pieces published just because they fear public criticism or do not have the right exposure or confidence to handle criticism.

To me, bloggers are a new genre of curious intellectuals who are, unlike what they have been labeled as, ‘inadequate, pimpled and single’, by BBC journalist Andrew Man, revolutionizing ideation and creation of digital content.

Bloggers do have a passion and blogging for sustainability is unquestionable, yet I do not envisage that they would ever replace journalism. Ged Carroll, director of Digital Strategies at Ruder Finn, warns against over compartmentalizing bloggers - ‘Labels lead to stereotyping and broad-brush relations campaigns’.

I don’t know whether by serendipity or by meticulous choice bloggers have carved a niche for themselves and are not beyond categorization. On one hand you have bloggers like Paul Krugman or Greg Mankiw who are stalwarts in their domains and are individuals, and on the other hand you have expert bloggers’ culmination on Mashable.

Can hobby be a key driver for blogging? I would say “yes”. Talk about lipglossiping.com - they blog to share views and opinions, discuss issues, recommend products and services related to colour-cosmetics and fashion. Remember, hobby bloggers can have huge a fan-following and can wield influence.
Single mothers, working mothers with babies and young children, these days are catching up with professional ones in terms of popularity. They blog to share their own experience which reassures others going through the same experience. They don’t perform a challenging task, rather the simplicity and candidness of their blogging is their unique selling proposition. Bloggers like Whosthemummy.co.uk have already gained sufficient mileage and is quite promising. Mummy bloggers are a huge and influential group. Trusted by their readers, they are increasingly playing a big role in product development and launches.

Radical thinkers always dazzle us; scintillate our minds by offering their perspective, which may be radically different from the official line. David Ottewell at blogs.menmedia.co.uk is a rich example of opinion bloggers. You spam them and they wouldn’t even react well because they take pride being different and not being Fleet Street journalists.

There’s no point in raising eyebrows on “blogging is a profession”! A team of opinionated female bloggers like Bitchbuzz.com earn money through writing. They have a serious business model in place with an emerging revenue model. Their motivation levels are the closest to that of the journalists since they blog for social sustainability.

A common thread that binds all these types of bloggers - whose interests and preferences are bizarre - is to break the clutter and stand apart from the crowd. The levels of maturity in terms of reader-base or revenue generation are different for each one of them but, I think survival is not just the single question on their mind - what matters the most is their passion and commitment.

Happy & Socially Sustainable Blogging!