Jakob Nielsen is probably the furthest thing from a Johnny-Come-Lately. The man started his blog site in 1995, back when domain registration cost $70. He is the Original Gangsta of usability. Which is all the more sad that he decides to write a typical Nielsen-ian article with all of the pomp and reassuredness of someone who has been in the game a long time — and knows it — but doesn’t, in fact demonstrate much, or any knowledge, in fact, of the topic at hand — blogging.

Let’s make one thing clear.

I respect where Jakob Nielsen is coming from. He does studies. He finds out what works through a process of investigation, analysis and inference. In some parts of the world, that’s called science. And you know what? I like science. I have a degree in science. I like it when we’re actually able to demonstrate that something works. Or doesn’t. Or does, with several caveats.

Furthermore, I don’t disagree with what he says about what works.

Whitepaper marketing makes a lot of sense for consultants. And that’s all he’s espousing. Jakob’ saying that consultants would better off be demonstrating their expertise with in depth and well thought out white papers. Furthermore, he’s encouraging this because they help propagate the sales cycle, where you’ll be able to create warm and qualified leads, which leads to eventual sales.

All completely makes sense — and very, very familiar to direct marketing fans out there.

But to say that you should do this instead of blogging? That blogging *only* fits his narrow — and narrow-minded — definition? I mean, where did he get that blogging is *only* short vapid commentary on other people’s blogs? That blogging doesn’t confer *other* benefits that might promote thought leadership? That for consultants who have no prior brand awareness or pull, how awesome blogging is for search engines? And that its actually possible to convert blog traffic into a multi-step marketing funnel?

This is where Mr. Nielsen strays far from the tracks. And quite frankly, I’m hopeful that he doesn’t get roughed up by any proverbial hobo’s (like me).

The funny thing is that there are two great ironies about his piece.

Firtsly, and the the biggest one, is that in spite of him kicking blogging as a marketing force it is, his own site, Alert Box, is a kind of proto-blog on its own. People define blogging in all kinds of ways. I like to define it in the broadest way possible, independent of the content, or things like comments. A blog is simply a way of distributing content in reverse chronological order. And by *that* definition, Useit.com is actually a blog.

Secondly, Mr. Nielsen says that you should spend your time creating quality content and clothe it in the garb of a whitepaper or a report or what have you (e-book, for example). Principally because he feels that there is a kind of distribution to the quality of your posts. That is, over time, some of them are mediocre, and therefore, take away from showing how competent you can be.

This last argument shows how shockingly detached Mr. Nielsen is from how blogging has matured, and moreover, how you can’t always apply a distribution-type understanding (Gaussian or otherwise) to this kind of medium. While there’s no doubt that some posts might be “mediocre”, they don’t need to be necessarily so. There are many industry leading blogs in the tech sector that post high quality content every day or something close to it — whether it be news, opinion, or analysis. They lead, in fact, *because* of their content. And there are some blogs which feature, rather exclusively, “how-to” content that probably would do well in some part as a white paper – but they’ve chosen to make it available to everyone as part of their blog. And for some of those bloggers who had no prior experience in such affairs before, making that content available, establishing relationships through blogging, participating in conversations *by* blogging has created worthwhile opportunities *because* of that leadership.

Oh, and one more thing. Mr. Nielsen is concerned that a poor post every now and then will erode your viewers opinions of you and your brand. My feeling is that expectations amongst blog readers aren’t as fragile as Jakob makes them out to be. I have no studies to back this up, but I will only tend to drop a blog from my feed reader (that’s a metric if you want to measure it) if I find that there’s been a trend in quality over time.

One or two off-posts won’t make a difference to me, and I suspect won’t make a difference to most individuals who read blogs. And this probably has to do with that most successful bloggers will make their best stuff readily readable — thereby getting over the potentially few bad posts every now and again, as self-evident proof of what they are made of.

At the end of the day, what Jakob Nielsen whitepaper marketing is but one strategy. To write off blogging in the way that it is done by many of the best and successful bloggers today, in 2007, shows an abysmal disconnect between what his opinion of blogging is, and what blogging actually is — and furthermore, what blogging can do for you.