IS BLOGGING DEAD? – People don’t read anymore. True or False?

When it comes to grabbing our attention videos, GIFs, and infographics take center stage. This begs the question “IS BLOGGING DEAD?”.

This question came about when a fellow marketer in a private Facebook group I am in – Andrew Wilkinson asked the question:

Blogging is dying; people don’t read anymore. True or False?

Hence the title of this latest blog post.

The response to the question (22 comments) was overwhelmingly one-sided. With everyone defending blogging and saying the statement was false.

Is Blogging Dead

Can we then deduct from this response that blogging is alive and well?

Perhaps not, the people defending blogging are most likely people who blog.

This makes the contributions very biased, however still coming from an educated perspective which does give some degree of credibility.

It would seem the best people to ask would be people who represent the niches of the various blogs.

This however was not a scientific study, it was a question posted in a social media group and open to much interpretation and debate.

I for one certainly put forward the case that blogging is alive and well.

I love blogging. It’s a fantastic creative outlet for me, of course, I would be biased.

Who do I Blog for?

At this moment in time, I blog for me, that is all. I do it because I love it. If not a single person read my post, it would not demotivate me in any way.

Blogging allows me to communicate with myself. To organize my thoughts and in many cases to give me the clarity I need to move on and evolve as a marketer.

This led me to really reflect and to be brutally honest with myself.

I don’t read many blog posts.

More often than not I go on YouTube to get what I want. Most of my Facebook feed is made up of videos, it certainly wasn’t like that 10 years ago.

This is so clear to me, that people prefer video content over typed content.

What does this mean – Is Blogging Dead?

The real issue with blogging is that it has a very low barrier to entry.

What does that mean?

It means anybody can have a go and anybody does.

This leads to a lot of really poor content, by people who have not got a clue what they are doing.

Blogging is a skill. Like any skill, you can be good at it or you can be terrible at it.

If you want to know why people are not clicking on your articles, don’t miss the post – The HIDDEN Reason People don’t Click on your Articles.

The Tale of the Misguided Plumber

I know a plumber and I was trying to tell him about the benefits of blogging on his website so that he could generate more organic Google search and get more clients.

He was able to tell me straight away, blogging doesn’t work.

How did he know this?

Because he published a handful of blog posts and it didn’t get him any traffic or extra business.

I listened and I checked out the blog posts on his website.

Honestly, they were terrible, thoughtless, and completely pointless. With some blatant and plunderous attempts to harness the power of keywords.

If this basis is what someone will use to derive their conclusion on the power of blogging, well we can easily see why people would say blogging is dead.

This would be a conclusion that is derived from the ignorance of the art, strategy, and science of blogging.

If you are going to base your opinion on anecdotal evidence, you can find results to suit your narrative no matter what it is.

Weighing up the Facts

The truth is that even after being more critical with my own assumption I still believe blogging is alive and well.

For the following reasons:

• Having online text is still the best way to be found through Google organic search.
• A well structured and well-informed article gives you a degree of credibility that you won’t get with other forms of content.
• Google analytics repeatedly shows that people do click on articles.

My Own Google Stats

I have an average time on my blog of over 3 minutes and a bounce rate in the mid-60s. By blogging standards, these are excellent metrics.

It is true that only about 20% of the people that click on your blog will read the article all the way to the end and that may be disheartening for you to hear.

However, this is the same across other forms of media as well. On Facebook 90% of people that watch a video watch it for less than 10 seconds.

This is the nature of how media is digested in this rapid fire world of the internet where information is hurled at you from every direction 24/7.

These metrics just show us where we need to focus and who we need to focus on.

It’s that 10 to 20 percent who we are writing for. It’s that same percentage that proves to us that blogging is certainly not dead but alive and well and here to stay.

Blogging is not dead, but it is greatly misunderstood.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments below!