Blogging is dead.
No one reads blogs now.
You should invest in Vlog instead.
Don’t we hear these all the times? Do you think blogging in 2021 will still be relevant? Will it survive?
YES.
It’s more than a decade that I have been writing blogs and almost every year I keep hearing about demise of blog.
The doomsday prediction never seem to cease but here we are, in 2021 and I can still say, blogs will be relevant.
Then what changes for blogging in 2021?
The reader.
The way you write.
The way you represent.
The reader? What has changed?
What about it? The demography is changing. No more is the reader just someone who is in a tier-1 city but they are much beyond that.
We are truly catering to global citizens and they could be sitting anywhere in the world.
They are also consuming in various different devices, so it not just the desktop you are serving into.
And they want to read but the content has to be ‘snackable’.
What is ‘snackable’ content?
Quick to consume.
Easily readable.
Easily understandable.
Listicles ruled the content world. We were inundated with content that started with – ‘Top 5’, ‘x ways’ and so on…
I was also guilty of putting content that way and it succeeded as well. So much that we also had a nice website called List.ly where many of us crowdsourced lists. Fun way to do it, eh!!
The advantage of ‘Snackable’ content is that it breaks even a large blog into simple, understandable piece which readers find it easy to consume.
So how do you write it?
Listicles are passe or so to say.
Instead, content writers can look into breaking information into multiple pieces.
“Stop writing long paragraphs”
Exactly, write shorter sentences. Divide them into multiple lines so that its easy for readers to consume.
Also, avoid jargons. While jargons can make you feel smart, the average reader will appreciate simple language.
Other than that, write in a style that answers readers question.
How can content be understandable?
This goes back to the basics of SEO, understanding how people are searching for content.
Because you want that in not only understandable by people but also search engines.
As most often, that is where the reader’s journey might start.
There are quite a lot of tools available now that will help you analyse reader’s intent and how they search – simplest one is the Google search suggestions.
eg. below show what and how people are searching
So write content that starts with a question and try to answer the question with your content.
Cover the basics of the problem and then move towards a solution.
Wherever possible, offer in-depth solution to the problem statement.
What is true now is – there is no place for crappy content.
Individuals and brands alike should invest time and resources on having good content, it should not be an afterthought.
Blogging just like in yesteryears will enable you to –
- position you as thoughtleader
- make you think better (it helps to structure my thoughts)
- enables to improve your search engine rankings (SEO is still the game you need to play)
2021 may not be a gamechanging year for blogging but as content creator, we all will have to change the way we blog.
It will survive, yet another year…
Happy New Year and happy blogging!!
