(Newswire.net — October 21, 2016) — Blogging is one of the most cost-efficient and reliable marketing strategies going. But tactics and tools in the digital arena rarely stay the same for long. What might the world of blogging look like as we move into the next decade? How can you prepare for the changes?
Predictions for the Future
Of course it’s inherently risky to try to predict the future in consumer trends and technology, but there are some key paths of development that are likely to shape the course of blogging in the near future:
- Higher emphasis on personal authorities. As Sam Ovens points out, personal branding is becoming more and more essential for expanding an audience and promoting your operation. People are becoming more wary of corporations and more willing to rely on individuals who have given them good reasons to trust their information. Personal branding has already taken over the content marketing industry: The majority of popular blogs center on one individual or represent a collaborative effort between multiple established commentators. That trend will likely continue to the point where personal authorities take precedence over any other sources.
- More encyclopedic entries and knowledge archives. We’re also seeing a rise in the value of encyclopedic entries and automatically provided information. Wikipedia started the trend more than a decade ago with collaboratively edited information articles on nearly every topic imaginable. Now, the Google Knowledge Graph is taking the reins and attempting to provide people with instant facts on any easily answerable question they might think of. The upshot is that bloggers who want to continue to gain an audience will have to focus their choices of content on much more niche-centered, hard-to-answer issues that won’t compete directly with the growing array of automated encyclopedia-style entries.
- Blog-generating algorithms. You’ve probably already read a news article without noticing it was composed by an automated, article-generating algorithm. AI journalists are already in operation, and it’s only a matter of time before they start blogging for us, as well. For the first few years, this probably won’t be much of a threat to bloggers, but by 2025 this phenomenon could easily rival or outpace the human capacity for simple articles. This threatens to put many bloggers out of business, and create demand for better- and higher-quality content — at the very least, content that displays greater personality and style rather than simple facts and data — regardless of whether it comes from more skilled human authors or “smarter” algorithms.
- Diversification of content. We’re about to see a major shift in how people consume content. In some ways, it’s already begun. Virtual reality (VR) is starting to make headway on the web, and tech media such as 360-degree video are changing how people can share experiences with one another. The old-fashioned 300-to-500-word blog post isn’t going to be as appealing to an audience that’s gotten used to fully immersive sensory experiences. If blogs want to continue to survive into the next decade and beyond, they have to understand and embrace these new forms of content.
- Personalized, customizable, and interactive content. Looking beyond simple content mediums, the way people interact with content will change, as well. Run-of-the-mill, straightforward verbal information will shrink in demand, because users will be able to find this kind of content anywhere. Instead, audiences will demand and treasure content that offers more of an experience that includes personalized, customizable, and interactive features. They’ll expect to read articles custom-written for their tastes and values, or at least content that’s adaptable based on the reader’s input. The more interactive features a blog can provide, the more popularity it’s bound to achieve.
- Higher and higher quality work. This is more of a general trend than a specific development, but it’s still worth a mention. As blog-generating algorithms and encyclopedias come to dominate content, and more and more bloggers crowd into the online marketing arena, audiences are going to be inundated with entry-level and “vanilla” content. In response, demand will surely shift toward higher and higher quality work, with a larger gap between what qualifies as “good” versus “bad” content. This means bloggers will need to bring their best game if they want to make it to the “good” side of the equation.
Why Blogging May Never Die
Despite the emergence of many new technologies that have the potential to kill blogging, the odds are that it will never die. Why? Because bloggers can adapt to these new technologies and trends, and incorporate them into their existing setup or reinvent themselves to accommodate the changes.
The key to survival as a blogger is evolution. It’s not going to be enough to have a “good” blog … at least, not in the long term. If you want to survive, you need to be sufficiently flexible and responsive to adapt to the coming transformations, whatever they turn out to be … and fast enough to stay ahead of your competition.