Apr
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Blogging as we know it is changing. Evolving. Are you ready? Do you feel confident that you know how blogging is changing so that you can best position yourself to take advantage? I’d like to share with you my personal perspective on the changes I see happening.
Blogging is becoming more than text
This first one should be pretty obvious to most of us by now. The advent of multimedia for blogs is astounding. I know the first thing you will think of is video. Without question, video blogging has officially arrived. But video isn’t all their is. Anything that can be embedded into a blog post extends the blog beyond text. And if there’s one thing programmers and creative people out there are really gunning for, it’s getting you to put their widget in your blog posts. Consider the following:
As more and more tools like these become available, blog posts will continue to be much more than text. If you’re not shooting video or enhancing your posts with multimedia, it’s time to consider it for your blog. Don’t do it without reason, but give people something more than just text to read when it helps to make more of an impression or provide further information. It’s one thing that will help your blog stand out and look fresher than other blogs in your niche.
Blogging is growing bigger
When you look at blogs like TechCrunch, Boing Boing, Engadget, and The Huffington Post, you can see how blogging is now the big time. Can your blog grow that big? Yes, it can. I can remember when TechCrunch didn’t exist and in the early days it started out with very few readers just like any blog. Of course, that didn’t last long, but that’s what great content and good connections to an industry will get you. I remember when the TreeHugger blog really was just a little WordPress blog trying to make a difference. Well, now they’ve made a difference and a bundle of cash, having been sold to the Discovery Times Newsgroup for $10 million. It was the right niche at the right time, with the right mix of content.
Blogging is growing smaller
At the same time, blogging is also growing smaller. So small, at first glance they hardly seem to be blogs at all. I’m talking about micro-blogging platforms, such as Twitter and Pownce, and I’m also talking about “tumblelogs,” which are often single-column stream-of-consciousness style blogs. Twitter in particular has exploded in popularity, and has aspects of a social media site, although it is described as a micro-blogging platform, due to its 140-character limit on post length.
The first tumblelog was created by Christian Neukirchen, and it’s called Anarchaia. Tumblelogging for everyone is made possible through the free, hosted service Tumblr or through single-column blog templates.
Blogging is becoming easier
Blogging is becoming easier in many ways:
- Free, hosted platforms like WordPress and Tumblr, plus social media blogging like Facebook and Twitter make blogging easier than ever for non-techies to just get going.
- More web hosting companies have one-click installs for WordPress self-hosted, giving you more freedom in some ways, but still requiring way more technical know-how than your average newbie possesses.
- The ability to share content with embed codes is getting to be more well-known and easier.
- Creating video and pictures and editing them online is getting easier.
Blogging is becoming more difficult
In some ways, blogging is becoming more difficult. The bar has been raised. The stakes are higher. The markers we look for that tell us a blog is professional and that give a blog the greatest chance for success are not easy to implement without technical knowledge. It takes more to start a professional blog now than it once did. Just getting started can be overwhelming to people, leaving room for people to make a living as blogging consultants to help people navigate blogging.
Creating original content that stands out from the sea of millions of other blogs is also becoming more difficult as the number of blogs continues to grow. Can it be done? Yes. Even the most over-saturated of niches can be dominated by a newcomer. Who ever heard of Dosh Dosh or Skelliewag a few years ago? Nobody. And yet now they are two of the most popular blogs in the make money online and meta-blogging niches.
Blogging is becoming one part of what is called social media
Finally, the big one. This is one that bothers some people who are hanging on to ideas about how blogging is writing in the older tradition of writing. Not only is blogging beyond text, as I’ve already mentioned, it’s also beyond content, period. This idea of content on a the web as static words–the pixel version on ink on paper–is evolving into something else. The intersection and synergy of blogging and social media really highlights this for me.
A big part of why some bloggers are wildly successful has less to do with the content they create on their blog than their networking activities. Social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn (more for business), and others facilitate this. Twitter is probably the most pronounced example of this stage in blogging’s evolution. Honestly, I don’t know whether to think of Twitter as a micro-blogging platform or a social media platform. It’s both, really. And you can expect further changes in this direction from other blogging and social media platforms, including WordPress.
Now that we’ve looked at some of the ways in which blogging is changing, I hope that this leaves you with a better perspective on this, and will help you make decisions about where you’re taking your blogging. I’d love to hear from you about how you see blogging changing. Please leave a comment below and let’s discuss!
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Because blogging is evolving so rapidly, I think it’s important too to stay open to these new ideas. Try them out. How you incorporate these strategies relates well to another post on this blog regarding developing a content creation strategy. The contradictions you post here make it clear that a focus for your blog can decide which course you take.
I guess the real issue is how you set the bar in terms of measuring success. I blog as a hobby and never expect to make any money from it, I just don’t have the time outside of my regular job.
For me, success is writing content that I am proud of any will bring something to others, be that knowledge, humour or just something to think about.
These are all really, really good points. You should follow this up with a post on all the ways that most blogs suck. Out of 200 million + blogs the top 1,000 get 95% of the traffic on the web. That should tell most people something about blogging…
This is a very true post. With Wordpress now making Flash videos integration into blog post easier with Wordpress 2.5, I have to say that more and more bloggers will be posting videos rather than blog posts packed with text within their blogs soon.
One good thing about this change in the blogosphere is that if a person is really creative and hardworking in blogging, his/her blog will grow at a tremendous pace. However, creative juices are now becoming much more precious compared to the previous era of blogosphere.
I guess suiting ourselves to this change rather than being stubborn about it like some will bring us much more benefits.
I’m not sure whether to think the social media upsurge is raising or lowering the barriers to entry.
It seems like there is so much effort going into building up social media networks and working the behind-the-scenes aspects of blog publicity, that it is increasingly difficult for someone who is not doing this full-time to make much of an impact.
Then again, if you really want to and take the time to figure out how, it may actually be easier than it was before everything became so rampantly interconnected. The blog “industry” seems a good deal less incestuous now than it did a few years ago.
It seems like there is something new everyday in the world of blogging. It certainly keeps things interesting. Whether it is micro-blogging like twitter or some new fancy widget it is all good