I’ve always wondered why more companies and individuals don’t blog.

For years, blogging has been the vehicle for expressing yourself in a relatively quick and relatively easy format.

However, as Steve Rubel points out in a recent tweet, blogging is like first base…

I am seriously considering skipping any panels where blogging is the sole subject matter. We need to focus on the ballpark, not first base.

The baseball analogy works here for blogging in terms of the general scope of online media and attention. Being on first base is promising in the game of baseball, but you have to have more actions and events to get the runner back to home to score the run. In teenage talk, first base is either holding hands or getting a kiss.

So, what’s beyond first base? I won’t touch the teenage talk example, so let’s move away from that analogy. Nevertheless, there is a brave new world out there and I think one of the keys to reaching those places is the important, but often overlooked, aspect of brevity.

Jonathan (Trust) has challenged me to Twitter only for a month to see what happens to CostPerNews. I’m already doing something similar like that on my personal blog (which is hosted on a tumblelog service called Tumblr) and I’ve actually had traffic jump over 140% since making the switch from a hosted WordPress blog there.

I’ve considered doing something similar here (and still consider it everyday), but my point is that blogging is just one aspect of an online media presence and should not be the only part. I’m not saying that we should all quit blogging and move on, but we do need to be familiar, comfortable and savvy with the developing platforms (like Twitter) instead of just holding on to one piece of the larger playing field.

If you want to follow me experiment with those, you can always follow me on my personal site or Twitter account (links in sidebar), Jonathan. CostPerNews will continue to change as PlanetBeta rolls out this week, but it will probably retain most of it’s “blog flavor” because there is still a place and a need for these formats as well.

This has important ramifications for our own marketing programs as well. We’ve barely just begun to scratch the surface of blogging in a B2C or even B2B context in affiliate and online marketing. Do a search or ask a friend about how their program or site improved with the addition of a blog and I’m sure you’ll get mostly positive results.

However, reaching influencers is the secret of online marketing. What better way to reach them than through early adoption platforms that they are already using? I’m not advocating gaming Digg or spamming Twitter. I’m suggesting that by getting involved and active in a niche community through helpful tools like Twitter or tumblelogs, beyond the scope of blogging, you are moving in the right direction for online (and offline) success.

Experiment!