A decade or so ago, Blogging was the hot thing to do. We all heard stories of stay-at-home moms, college kids, and unemployed middle-aged guys starting a blog about something like parenting, cooking, or fitness, who ended up creating a small digital empire. Best-selling book included.
These days, however, you might find yourself thinking that blogging is dead, or that it’s, at least, dying out. You can’t be blamed for that.
You see…
- The novelty of blogging has worn off for most folks quite a while ago now and as a result, mainstream media has typically been much more focused on social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat instead of blogs themselves.
- Google pretty much killed the concept of RSS subscriptions (with an exception made for the most technical of audiences). There is the distinct impression that fewer people follow blogs. Many now pay attention to blog when a random article appears in their Facebook feed.[1]
- Some of the most successful blogs today follow the BuzzFeed approach. Posts that are lists of images, clickbait titles, and questionable ads (that are often, intentionally, hard to distinguish from the actual content on that site).
Don’t get me wrong, social media has its place. It is, in fact, something that, as a blogger, you need to do to succeed at – a topic that I plan to cover more in detail in future posts. BuzzFeed then, as moronic as it might appear to be, is creating content that people want. In a fast food way, granted, but still providing something people actively seek. So there is some value behind their billion dollars valuation (whether we agree with their methods or not).
I’ll give you my take. None of this really matters. Who cares if blogging is hot or not or if doing it makes still makes you sound cool or not. Blogging remains a valuable and viable approach to making extra income online or advancing your career, projects, ideas, goals, dreams. It’s still one of the most accessible ways to continually publish new content online at little to no (financial) cost to yourself.
Blogging has matured. It’s become a serious business tool, and it has a huge host of benefits, regardless of where you are in your career.
Some might see it as something boring and less exciting than its micro-publishing, social media cousin, and frankly I don’t mind that either. As a software developer, I can really appreciate the value of a mature stack or platform, even if people no longer consider it to be something new and sexy.
Successful businesses that are centered around blogs spring to life every day. If you haven’t started blogging yet, I sincerely hope that you give it an honest go. It’s certainly more work than impulse publishing 140 characters on Twitter, but the rewards, as is so often the case with hard work, are far greater as well.
And that won’t ever change.
- I’m pretty certain that fewer people are subscribing to blogs. That’s why you need to ensure that you have a post-based mailing list available. (More on this in a future post.) Subscribe here. 🙂 ↩
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I’ve had a blog since blogging began it seems and have wondered why I continue. I’ve arrived here because I searched if blogging was a thing and agree with your sentiment that blogs are marketing tools, click bait, and more of a buzz feed thing. I remember when reading blogs were fun, I remember when life within a forum was fantastic; life before facebook killed the internet.