blog

Blogging about Blogging

By Andy Edwards

I am not the most frequent contributor to the kasina blogosphere, but the nature of this medium is one that lets me hop in now and then to share my opinion and direct our audience and clients to valuable information. That being said, it is truly surprising that blogs have not taken off more in the asset management industry. While Compliance places many hurdles on the interactive components of the medium, there certainly is a vast audience hungry for the timely and topical information that blogs can provide.

It is hard to believe that blogging is no longer a peripheral, marginalized value-adding activity, but has entered the mainstream media lexicon. Much of the content the NY Times updates throughout the day on its local news Web site is posted in a blog-like setting to keep it competitive with the 'antiquated' medium of television.

All sales and marketing efforts are driven by the flow of information, and the asset management industry is even more vested in this value proposition than most, so why aren't blogs a more prominent part of asset manager's Web sites? Other industries that live and die by the ability to communicate rapidly changing information to core constituencies, have seized the power of this medium - politics comes to mind with the emergence of forums such as Politico.com and The Huffington Post.

As we look at Time Magazine's recent article on The Best Blogs of 2010, the simple answer is that it appears to be a medium focused on entertainment and the narrow interest of enthusiasts - not a 'serious means' of communication. Ironically, our industry represents such a parochial interest and could benefit tremendously from taking advantage of this technology.

With efforts by firms such as PIMCO (with Bill Gross's prominent entry into the blog-like space), we have to consider this to be a serious outlet for communicating to our customers and key constituencies. While firms routinely and proudly post appearances of their PM's on CNBC, most don't take the initiative to bring this content directly to their audiences. While the imprimatur of a CNBC appearance might drive initial interest, if we sincerely believe our own marketing literature about the uniqueness of our firms' perspectives, we should be able to generate content that rivals those 30-second sound bites. Blogging can be that vehicle. Best of all, blogging does not involve the expenditure of a lot of hard-dollar resources. Instead, it is dependent on a commitment to communicate in a manner and timeframe that many in our industry are not yet comfortable with. Audiences have developed an appetite for this type of content; it is up to our industry to deliver.