Blogs making a comeback is a theme we see usually at the beginning of the year. The same question pops up constantly: Are blogs dying out? And again, and again the answer is: No, they’re not! In fact it’s the contrary; blogs keep coming back again and again!
I’ve been blogging for over 10 years.
- In the beginning it was all about keeping friends and family up to date on my adventures around Europe.
- Eventually I purchased my own domain, learned a bit of coding and started reading about and implementing SEO into the mix.
Blogging is my passion because it incorporates two of my favourite things; writing and photography. So, even though everybody is talking about “the death of the blog” I decided my passion for writing was worth staying in the game regardless. Because it’s never too late!
There are periods when the blogosphere is a tad quieter, sure. But the fact is that even if last year might have been slower and quieter, blogging as an industry is NOT going anywhere.
So, let’s see WHY blogs are making a comeback:
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5 Reasons Why Blogs Are Making A Comeback In [cur_year]
There’s no denying it, blogs are making a comeback! And there are very clear and good reasons for that. In this post I will introduce you to 5 reasons why blogging never went away, and never will. A lot of it has to do with how marketing has changed:
While social media still takes a large chunk of the cake, blogs have cemented their place as a marketing tool waaayy before social media was even born. So, here’s why people keep returning to blogs again and again.
1. We want to take back control!
We keep hearing constantly how Instagram is trying to find more and more ways to force adverts down our throats while taking power away from us creators. We can already see a backlash to this, as more Instagram users turn their accounts private. Instagram’s updates are always less and less user-friendly, so why would we play their game anyway?
Read also: The Problem With Instagram and What To Do About It?
Then there are all these social media platforms that were super popular for a while and suddenly just died. Such platform like Vine and Snapchat. Even Twitter lost a considerable amount of users after a certain billionaire took it over. What does all this tell us?
It means that we as consumers, users and enablers (because those platforms wouldn’t exist without us!) want to take back control.
And that is the main difference between a blog and a social media platform; a blog is its creator’s property. I own this domain, this website and every single word and photo on it. It’s mine and I control what happens to it, if anything.
So, whatever you see here on my page, you can be damned sure it’s about me and my opinions:
- Written by me,
- edited by me
- and published by me.
- No misleading adverts and changing algorithms here, I can guarantee that.
Trustworthiness as well as authenticity is gaining more value every passing year and it’s fast becoming one of the most important currencies in the online world. And as awareness of the privacy issues on social media platforms grows, blogs making a comeback becomes more and more major.
Trust and security are advantages that blogs have over social media always.
Newsletters = mini blogs
For many people starting a blog seems like a bigger project to take on than what they have capacity for. And to some extent they would be absolutely right! On top of creating content you also manage a website and your blog’s marketing, which can all get overwhelming sometimes.
Thankfully there is another great option: newsletters! Starting a newsletter is easy and quick when you choose a service that offers ready templates. And these templates are free as part of your subscription.
A newsletter can be used as a blog to talk about your daily adventures and to share tips and advice. Or it can be used for affiliate marketing to share services and products that you love. The possibilities are endless and reach as far as your imagination does.
I personally use MailerLite, which is one of the simplest and cheapest newsletter services out there. They also have great customer service, which I’ve needed to rely on on multiple occasions. Check them out here:
2. Consumers want authenticity and personal approach
Every time Facebook, Netflix, Instagram or any platform decides to incorporate advertisements or more advertisements, it causes shivers of dislike in each of us. Personally I am rather fed up with advertisements taking over most my Instagram nowadays.
The particularly oppressive factor about all these adverts teeming on social media platforms is the fact that they are so extremely targeted to us thanks to the modern day ‘eavesdropping’.
We all know that if you mention a certain brand bag in a conversation, even if the conversation itself has nothing to do with the bag, the next time you go online, you’ll see an advert of that particular bag. This is straight out of Stalin’s handbook of ‘how to spy Soviet Union-style‘ and it’s fucking horrid!
Which brings me to another reason why I’m sensing that blogs are making a comeback. With blogs you know where every recommendation and brand praise comes from. Especially if you’ve followed a blogger for a long time you know a little bit about them and probably like their taste. And that’s why you trust them more than a random advert.
Yes, some people will promote anything just for the money, but they’re peeing in their own cereals in the long term. An then there are blogs that are teeming with adverts cutting the text so that you would accidentally click them. Those ads ensure that I exit a website in a millisecond!
Whether you continue following a certain blog or not is completely in your control. Don’t give your time to inauthentic greedy bastards.
More on the topic: Future of Blogging – What Does It Look Like?
3. AI emphasises original content’s importance
In case you haven’t noticed it yet, artificial intelligence is becoming a more and more integral part of our daily lives. The latest development has been Google stating that it will start marking content automatically as “made with AI” if there’s even a whiff of AI in a text or an image.
Things change quickly with these updates, though, as we saw with the AI summaries in google search: it didn’t work very well. While AI struggles to understand the contextual differences between what we are looking for and what it offers us as answers, it has allegedly been taught to downgrade content that has been generated using AI.
- THIS can be a surprising perk for bloggers.
- As long as bloggers offer original, authentic content, Google’s AI algorithm should promote our content above AI-generated content.
- Many bigger businesses rely heavily on AI in their marketing efforts, so this gives us a vantage point.
- The general opinion towards AI-generated content is very low, which gives true creators a confidence boost and a head start.
At the end of the day, bloggers usually start blogs as their creative outlets. So, why would we genuinely want to give up on creating altogether and instead let a robot do it for us? If that’s the path you’ve chosen, I’ll be honest: I won’t be sorry if you don’t succeed.
4. Blogs’ popularity is growing among businesses
Blogs have always been resources where people expect to find accurate information, step-by-step guides and honest opinions. Even though there are worries that people don’t read books as much as they used to, blogs still hold their popularity.
And when people look for advice or information they Google it. And what are some of the very first results on any search engine, no matter what keywords you tap in the Search bar? Oh yes, blog posts. And still today 77% of internet users read blogs regularly.
So, not surprisingly, more and more businesses have started to lean towards adding a blog to their business website. It’s such an important and efficient SEO tool in marketing and sales. Sci-Tech’s research showed that blogs have brought in even 55% traffic increases to business websites and 67% increase in monthly leads.
And if we look at the number overall, there’s absolutely no doubt that blogs making a comeback will continue far into future:
- There are 600 million blogs among 1.9 billion websites globally
- In WordPress sites alone there are around 70 million new blog posts published each month
- Annually bloggers publish 7.5 million new posts globally every day.
It’s also not a coincidence that after the public’s opinion on AI-generated content in marketing turning out as sour as it did, there was a sharp increase in hiring human copywriters in Silicon Valley. It’s as if artificial content is exactly what it says on the tin: artificial = inauthentic.
5. Blog posts stick around
From the point of view of the retailers, brands and everyone who’s interested in collaborating with influencers, blogs beat social media platforms 6 – 0! Why? Because a blog post sticks around for years, maybe decades! And every time those specific keywords are searched on Google, the post gets more and more visibility and clicks.
Need help with SEO? Allow me to help!
Blogs should be, and are, a stable long-term solution for anyone who wants to market their products and brand. But blogs are especially good for new brands that are breaking into the markets where competition is hard.
Choosing the right blog and blogger to collaborate with in order to kick-start your new lipstick sales is one of the most effective and continuous marketing strategies.
Blogs Making a Comeback – Conclusion
I’m going to join my fellow bloggers in praising this year as the Year of the Blog! But it won’t be the Year of the Blog unless we make it so!
So, now is the time to admit to yourself (if you haven’t done so already) that your blog is good enough and even better than you’ve allowed yourself to think. Shout about it online and offline, advertise, market, make people aware.
And who knows, you may have a whole new set of followers and a new stream of revenue by the end of this year.
I’d love to hear what you lovelies think of blogging especially now that the new year has been kicked to full speed again! Is this the year blogs are making a comeback? ♥
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