Just to reiterate the point from my post a moment ago, Steve Rubel yesterday linked to Technorati’s “state of the blogosphere” analysis, with the obvious implication that having a blog is not enough. Core marketing principles, once again, are core.

According to Technorati, 13.7 million bloggers are still posting three months after launch. So much for staying power. Not only that, but Technorati is now tracking nearly 50,000 blog posts per hour. While early adopters could gain traffic simply by posting new content, that’s way too much volume today to expect that diligent posting will lead to an audience.

So, ironically, we come back to core marketing principles, regardless of the tactical application. Regardless of the medium — be it blogs, podcasts, newsletters, etc — small business marketers still need to think creatively about how to reach their target audiences. Probably these tools are a good way to do that, but it still comes down to proactive outreach with relevant services (and content).

What happned to John Jantsch? His Blogging Business site has really laid out some great tips for small business online marketing, but he hasn’t posted since October of last year. I hope he’ll get back to it, because a great deal of his writing speaks directly to small businesses trying to get a marketing boost online.

For example, last September his post on Ezines, Email, Blogs or RSS clearly lays out the small business marketers delima - should I have an e-newsletter, or a blog? Unfortunately for the time-crunched, the answer is both. The point is not whether you are "blogging" but what your content says about your company and your services.

To me, it all comes back to the target audience. Everything in your marketing plan needs to be geared around the audience - from their media consumption preferences to the messages they’re most open to accepting. So whether you blog, or publish a newsletter, or just put press releases on your website, what you ultimately want to do is reach your audience, and as Mr. Jantsch has pointed out in the past, that’s how you create momentum.