Public Relations & Social Media Insight

Writing is still the best medium for demonstrating expertise on the web.

These days, Pinterest and Instagram get all the headlines as companies desperately racing to establish a beachhead on what could be the next mega-platform. But that doesn't mean they're the most useful social media tools for all companies. Sure, some businesses excel on those photo-based networks (Benjamin Moore's Director of Digital Marketing told me Pinterest worked so well for them, "it's almost like it was made for Benjamin Moore.") But for organizations and individuals that want to be known for their ideas, the clearest — yet most underrated — path is through blogging. It hasn't been buzzed about in years, but it's more essential than ever, as organizations like the World Bank(which recently invited me to speak to their global staff about blogging) recognize.

Indeed, if you want to shape public opinion, you need to be the one creating the narrative.A fascinating study last year by Yahoo Research showed that only 20,000 Twitter users (a mere .05% of the user base at the time) generated 50% of all tweets consumed. A small number of "elite users" sets the conversational tenor, just as in the general world of blogging....