Jamaicans make it their point of duty to catch as many world trends as possible. When we can’t, we create our own: in the inimitable style of “if it is egg, we inna the red.” So, it is no surprise that we are now busily establishing ourselves as a part of the firmament of the blogosphere. Blogging away as if our lives depended on it.

Just last week, a 23-year old Jamaican Corve Dacosta successfully executed the first ever Jamaica Blog awards. As a first time venture it meant that that not all the bugs were worked out, but props are due to DaCosta who convinced sponsors, LIME, National Commercial Bank, Jamaica Pegasus and ReThink Caribbean.com to come on board and highlight the work of our best bloggers. Over three hundred persons attended the final event at the Jamaica Pegasus.

Corve, a marketing graduate of the University of Technology, started blogging over a year ago, intrigued by his own personal fascination with this medium. When the website announcing the Jamaica Blog awards was launched there were 16,000 page views the first day alone and he pointed out that “we did not run one press advertisement to publicize the awards, everything was done on line, on FaceBook and Twitter”.

For those, like me, who are tentative but willing sailors on the seemingly unsinkable ship, the SS Social Media, blogging is another vast area of possibilities opened up by the internet. The name ‘blog’ blends the words web and log (as in the Captain’s log or diary) and refers to a website or part thereof. It is an outlet for those who are passionate about a subject area. Passion, bordering on obsession has to be a key ingredient in your creation of a personal blog because, let’s face it, it is easy to lose interest in writing about something that you only feel half-hearted about. No use firing up yourself to write one measly entry to your blog and then leaving it to flounder like so much flotsam and jetsam on the internet sea. I can see the skeptics, moving towards their waste-paper bins, pooh-poohing blogs as so much waste of time and a boon only for “waste-a-time” people who have nothing more important to do. Unhand the bin, blogging can be good for business.

To understand the potential of blogging let us look briefly what the communications rules were like in the not too distant past. In those bad old days mass media was our main resort. “In the old days, he who screamed loudest won. Communication was all about reaching as many eyeballs and ears as possible for the least amount of money”. Katie Delahaye Paine (Communication World (CW) 2007). “( These days)The vast majority of eyeballs and ears really don’t care what you’re trying to say. They are going on-line and searching for what interests them, forming networks with people of similar interests, ignoring the mass communications that corporations throw at them. Forget about reach and frequency. Success in today’s marketplace is measured not by how broad your reach is but by how deep your network is,” she says.

The blogsphere is made up of the voices of millions of passionate, chattering people, spouting off about their interests and their dislikes: combined they can be a powerful army using the arsenal of ‘influence’. Recently, the media agency Universal McCann published the remarkable results of a survey of 9,460 online users worldwide. There are 170 million blog creators and 340 million blog readers worldwide, mainly in emerging Internet markets in Asia.

An example of the success of personal blogging is told in the November-December 2007 issue of CW. Malaysian Kayaking enthusiast Francis Ho started a blog to share photographs of his kayaking trips with friends. “I never expected anyone would be interested in my blog,” he says. “Who wants to read about a 50-year-old guy’s lame views and photos, right? So I was astounded at the number of total strangers and visitors who visited my blog, which was basically focused on kayaking in Kuching!” When Ho started his tour company, Kuching Kayaking, which leads kayaking trips through the beautiful rainforests of East Malaysia, his clients got to know about the business primarily through his blog, which offers a personal angle to the business web site. He thinks the blog has helped increase the number of online bookings. “Kayaking is a passion, and through my blog, I think that people can sense the enthusiasm and how genuine and wonderful a kayaking trip through the rainforests is,” he says.”.

For corporate organizations, blogs allow you to cozy up to your clients and potential customers. Creating an entry to your blog about a new product or a new process that your business offer can give you instant feedback from those who might want to give you two thumbs down. If you are brave enough you might even encourage your CEO to create a blog for the company where he can start a conversation. Do you dare? Don’t even think of ghost writing it for him or her because the best blogs thrive on authenticity. I will bet my bottom dollar that when you start blogging even those staff members who for years have never had anything to say will react to information in a company’s blog, reaching for their Thesaurus and Oxford to properly address you. My suggestion is not to start it if you do not have a carrion crow stomach for strong criticism, external and internal. Nevertheless, the blogosphere beckons.

Yvonne Grinam-Nicholson, (MBA, ABC) is a Business Communications Consultant with ROCommunications Jamaica, specialising in business communications and financial publications. She can be contacted at: yvonne@rocommunications.com. Visit her website at www.rocommunications.com and post your comments.