I monitor traffic on a couple of sites I run using Mint, which tells me in real time how many people are finding my site, and how they are getting there – source, keywords, etc. It’s quite addictive and I have to watch it – only check it a few dozen times per hour. This morning, the traffic on my personal blog is exploding thanks to this…

That’s right, my blog about Rick Warren delivering the invocation at Barack Obama’s inauguration made it to the #1 headline spot on Google’s Blog Search home page. How? I’m not sure exactly. What I do know is that every time I publish a new article on a WordPress-driven site, Google’s Blog Search gets pinged to notify it. To me, this represents a powerful tool. Blogging isn’t dead or even dying – more people are culling news results from blogs today than ever before.

I’ve said before that you can’t NOT have a blog if you want to reach the next generation with your message, and I’m sticking to that opinion. Don’t underestimate the power of social media, of which blogging is but a small part.