Jake and I go way back. But this time, shockingly enough, he and I agree, sorta.

I recently served as a “consultant’s consultant,” advising a world leader in his field on what to do about his website. In particular, this expert asked me whether he should start a weblog. I said no.

You probably already know my own Internet strategy, so it might not surprise you that I recommended that he should instead invest his time in writing thorough articles that he published on a regular schedule. Given limited time, this means not spending the effort to post numerous short comments on ongoing blogosphere discussions.

Weblogs have their role in business, particularly as project blogs, as exemplified on several award-winning intranets. Blogs are also fine for websites that sell cheap products. On these sites, visitors can often be easily converted and the main challenge is to raise awareness. For example, a site that sells pistachio nuts should post as much content about pistachios as possible in the hope of attracting quick hits by people searching for that information. Some percentage of these visitors will buy the nuts while visiting the site.

Essentially, a good blog is good content, articles or not. In other words, you can write a good blog in article form. You don’t have to call it a blog.

I do think Scoble is overreacting though. Robert, Jakob’s point (at a high-level) does make sense.

By the way, here’s a nice email exchange I had with Jakob 3 years ago. I dunno, funny to me. Full story on this here in the archive.

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