Blogging is an interesting business. It looks easy to many although it’s not quite as easy as many would like to believe (it’s also not as tough as many like to portray it either).

Every day we are tasked with keeping our readers informed with what we believe are some of the more interesting developments in the world of Internet and social media marketing. Some days there is a lot to talk about and other days, well, not so much.

It’s the times of ‘not so much’ that we often look to guest posts to help us fill the void, add new, fresh voices to the blog and ultimately give our readers information that keeps them connected to us.

When my cat was younger, he liked to claw at certain areas of our carpet. Through trial and error, my wife discovered that the best way to keep him from scratching was to spray Dollar Store Perfume where he’d like to claw. The strong scent would keep him from being naughty and ruining the flooring. I would jokingly ask my wife why she couldn’t buy the perfume that she wears at the Dollar Store…for after all, they’d feature many of the top “Brands” (term used loosely). Her reply was that Dollar Store perfume was very strong-smelling and the scent doesn’t last for more than a few minutes.

Do you still blog on behalf of your company? If you do, you’re part of a dying breed. According to a University of Massachusetts Dartmouth report, corporate blogging is on the decline.

Of the companies they surveyed, only 37% were blogging in 2011. That’s down from 50% in 2010. If you look only at Fortune 500 companies, the percentage drops to 23%.

Why are corporate blogs falling out of favor? USA Today says, mostly because Facebook and Twitter are so much easier to manage.

Keeping up a blog is a lot harder than people think. I’ve dealt with dozens of clients who jump in with grand plans of updating every day! They soon learn that updating even once a week is a chore. It’s amazing how quickly seven days pass when you need to come up with a fresh blog post.

It used to be that blogging was sexy. It was what the cool kids did.

On many levels it still is but the content landscape has changed decidedly as social media continues to cement itself into our online world.

The nice thing about blogging is that it is not only surviving this period of change but it is even thriving. The chart below comes from Nielsen’s NM Incite service and shows the growth of blogging during the age of social media.

The need for a place for more developed thoughts and examinations of subjects has actually never been greater. As people realize exactly where social media falls in the process of content ingestion there needs to be a place where the 140 character idea is worked out in more detail. People who are smart seek more information and will not settle for undeveloped thoughts that are abbreviated to fit social media’s format.