Social media keeps rising in popularity. Just about everyone is on Twitter and Facebook these days. More people are jumping onto Tumblr to share even more content, so should we even bother will more full-blown blogs anymore? Internet entrepreneur Neil Patel certainly thinks so.

In a recent post on Search Engine Journal, the KISSmetrics founder outlines seven different reasons why blogging is still important in 2012. One of the biggest reasons is that a powerful blog will always serve as a great foundation for all your social media activities. Even if you are very active on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook, you still want somewhere that you can direct that interest and traffic.

A blog can do that. It's your home base and it's where you can drive that attention. By having that home base, you are better positioned to build your brand as an expert, build trust among your readers, and establish your legitimacy. Otherwise, you've just got pieces scattered all around the web with nothing to hold them together.

And let's not forget about the SEO benefits too. Sure you can have some eyes on your Twitter stream, but a consistently updated blog is a very good thing for search engine optimization. Google smiles upon dynamic content that is actually useful and having a blog keeps those spiders and bots coming back, better indexing your material and sending more organic traffic your way.

Blogging is still important and that's half the reason why we keep blogging here on Gseo. Do you keep a blog? Why or why not?