Ok, so the title is a little misleading. Perhaps it should be “why are we still blogging on our own websites”?
We used to blog as a platform to voice an opinion, way before popular social media platforms were established as vehicles get your voice heard.
How It Used To Be
Blogs were a place to put down your thoughts, to gain readers and a way to express yourself via text, images, audio and video. If you were lucky you’d gain regular readers and subscribers, you would comment on similar blog posts out of real interest and there was a sense of community. This was before we had followers or fans, pinners, plus oners and likers.
Social as a blogging platform?
Things have changed, you can build and sustain audiences without even creating and maintaining your own website. Google +, Facebook offer tools to blog as much as you want without even having your own website. The viral nature of these platforms help your content get discovered. So should we be publishing average bog standard bloggy content on our own websites? A blog by definition is web log, so wouldn’t that be better served on a social platform rather than your own website?
Back in August a group of bloggers tried blogging exclusively on Google +, here’s some of their thoughts and feedback.
Stretching ourselves across social media
We’re already stretching ourselves out across as many social platforms as possible building a profile and in reality, micro blogging. Perhaps our time would be better spent increasing the number of blog posts on social and publishing less often but better quality on our own websites?
Flora the explorer tends to write at least a couple of paragraphs per post about her travels on facebook.
But the vast majority are still hammering out as much content as possible on their own sites even if it isn’t actually that interesting or useful, in the hope it’ll boost their unique visitor numbers by adding more content.
Once we didn’t have much of a choice but today we do, so why not save your most amazing content for your website and basic blogging for social? Many bloggers already blog on social on top of publishing articles themselves. Some might argue that more content the better and that it’ll drive traffic via SEO. But what use is that traffic when the article is.. just average? Why not wait to publish an amazing original, useful and ultimately sharable piece on your website? That content is far more likely to drive relevant search traffic and be shared for genuinely being useful or interesting to people. Use the bloggy content to engage your audience on social platforms.
Its not always about quantity but quality that counts, not just for search engines but for users too. Perhaps we should stop measuring unique visitors and start looking at engagement stats such as time on page. Are visitors actually spending much time on your site? Is your content really that engaging?
Ditch the website?
I’m not saying ditch the website entirely, I’m suggesting that bloggers should select their very best work to be published and perhaps those thoughts that are less useful and engaging to be posted on social instead. Once we didn’t have incredible social tools and profile building platforms available to take this approach, but we do now. We should be building our websites into an amazingly unique, useful and engaging resources not one that’s diluted with substandard content.
We should be striving to make our websites exceptional not just bog standard.
Hi Alastair!
It’s certainly easier to have one system such as G+ to identify people, easier to comment and share etc.
I think the advice that you should be posting as much content as you can is a little outdated especially with such profile building platforms that we now have.
Certainly some barriers… your comment got approved though! You should have seen a message saying that it was awaiting moderation.
Thanks,
Paul
Reading this post feels a bit like reverse engineering. I think I’ve been organically doing what you suggest (particularly on G+) without thinking it through as a strategy first! So, thanks for getting me to recognise what I’m doing!
There *is* one other small benefit to posting on multiple platforms – better engagement.
We tend to be protective of our own blogs, and set up the comments system defensively, with registrations, CAPTCHAs, etc) which just puts quite formidable barriers in the way of comments, which commenting on G+, FB, Pinterest or any other SM network doesn’t.
I often comment on the FB or G+ pointer to a blog post in preference to the post itself because it’s easier.
…which is why I hope to make that point here, if I can navigate your comment system š
… and I don’t know the answer to that yet, because when I hit the Submit button, nothing happened. I assume/expect it has gone away for moderation, but all in all…. it would have been easier to comment on your G+ post.
I definitely agree with the your thoughts on only sharing your best content but the main problem with social is that things get ‘lost’. It’s unlikely anyone is going to scroll through your Twitter updates from 6 months ago to see what you did in a certain country but they are likely to read a blog post, even if it is short and sweet.
The good thing about blogs is that you get to find out the little details that guidebooks and print publications miss out. We’ve got the space to publish as much as we like and include all the little details.
Social media is great for real time engagement and good to provide a snippet of what’s to come on the blog but I think blogs should still be the main platform.
Also, something that you don’t find ‘interesting’ or ‘shareable’ might actually be really useful to someone else.
Hi Monica,
I take your point about the little details, but I’d expect that from proper articles published on a website rather than actually blog content in the form of thoughts.
I think the shift here is that potentially we can use social in the way that blogging was originally, more of a thought stream not trying to be a resource with useful information like prices, dates, websites address etc for example. I think sometimes we’re over SEO’d and tried to do what Google wants rather than actually sticking to the fundamentals of blogging.
For me this comment made by one of the people involved in blogging just on G+ (https://plus.google.com/113117251731252114390/posts/bBxx3kZkpFM) made a lot of sense, really about getting back to the fundamentals of blogging:
āI rediscovered what a blog is meant to be. It’s me, my thoughts, and my perspective on various issues and subjects, shared with others who can read it or not. It’s not numbers, statistics, or targeted subjects to gain more views. It’s not monetizing a strategy or selling a site or advertisements on a site which is NOT blogging.ā
I do agree that it’s difficult to archive stuff for people to find it social… although G+ posts can be public and searchable on Google. If there was a decent solution to categories or search on your old posts… and perhaps there is. Other platforms, no so easy… twitter even facebook (posts on found in Google).
A lot of bloggers are now posting pictures every day but hiding them from most of their readers so as not to spam them…. then why put it on your blog to begin with? Better to just publish these one a day photos to your social platforms and not clog your blog up with content that really isn’t going to do anything for you in traffic terms.
I see my website as my tool to provide advice/opinion and useful knowledge that people are only going to be looking up with a search engine and not a social platform. While I still post photos there once a week or two and put up opinion posts its more to break up the flow of information, the main focus is to produce content that’s going to answer a question.
I do have to say that other bloggers run very successful sites because people enjoy following them and what they get up to. Their blog is essentially a combination of likes, pins, tweets and so forth, call it social media before social media existed. They follow the person like a celebrity so its more a matter of different strokes for different folks. There is no right or wrong way to run a blog.
Hi Paul,
Found this interesting. I was recently commissioned to do some research on post frequency & effectiveness across a few travel blogs, and we found that those doing āless, betterā were more successful – more social shares, comments and page authority (the latter according to Moz).
Clearly not everyone sees āeffectivenessā the same way, or indeed blogs to be āeffectiveā in the first place, but for those who do I think quality over quantity is going to become an increasingly big deal. Youāre right to say external profile-building tools are part of that, but Iād argue search trends are in the picture too – Googleās moving further and further away from straight keyword matching, and if you asked Matt Cutts for advice today heād probably say something very similar to your last couple of pars here.
Also really like the quote in your reply to Monica. Hadnāt thought about this as the āblogā moving to social channels while the site becomes something else, but that framing makes a lot of sense.
Cheers,
Nathan
Great post, Paul – I think this addresses an important issue. I’m fairly new to travel blogging and still getting used to everything, but I’ve already realised that many bloggers have a rigid posting schedule that doesn’t change, even if they cannot produce enough content to fill it. This means I’ve come across quite a few posts that are rushed, quite a few irrelevant guest posts, and pieces that look like an entire post but are basically an excuse to paste a photo and write two sentences.
Personally I’ve decided to avoid a schedule in favour of posting content that matters to me and that I (hopefully) wouldn’t be ashamed to call my own. I’d rather think of my blog as a writing portfolio than a home for many half-finished and error-laden pieces. It’s really interesting to see that other people agree with this.
Hi Chris,
G+ posts come up in search engines too! š
I think there is a case for creating a website for better quality content, social platforms seems like an ideal place to be much more bloggy.
Hi Nathan,
Thanks for the comment! I agree about the Google point. If you want to drive search traffic you’re really going to need some amazing content not some shallow blog post that you rushed just to get content out in time.
Hi Polly,
I think (personally) you’re on the right lines. Treating your site as a portfolio and creating some really special content is the way to go. But I think if you can tie that in to being an expert on your subject/topic via social in order to build a profile it’ll help a lot in the future. It’s certainly the way Google seems to view it too.
As you know, this week I’m micro-blogging on my G+ page (what a happy coincidence)! At the moment, I’m just testing out the waters to see what kind of result it will have. I have quite a good interaction rate on my blog posts (for the amount of readers I have) and want to find out if that will transfer over into G+, too.
Often, I have lots of ideas for blog posts but don’t have enough words to make it lengthy enough, or don’t have the time to do the research to make it a worthwhile post. I’m not one for just flinging up a photo on my blog and considering that a post (although I did do this when I started out blogging, unfortunately), so social sites offer a great way for me to promote my thoughts without waffling on in a blog post – if that makes sense.
I agree that only the best quality stuff should be posted on your blog as this is the content that will stick around the longest and will always be attached to your name. Social, on the other hand, is great for throwaway ideas, unless you’re a large company with a lot of people watching.
As I find myself with less and less time to dedicate to lengthy blog posts than I would like to, I’m having to turn to other platforms to keep connected with my readers, and this micro-blogging malarky seems like a good enough place to start! Thanks for pointing me in the direction of this post š
Thanks for commenting Lizzie and look forward to seeing how it goes blogging on G+ (here’s the link https://plus.google.com/u/1/115365582974041394402/posts/LTspxzgUumq), although I guess G+ is just blogging as there are no limitation character wise for it to be micro… unlike twitter! š
I think there are easier platforms that we could be using to just blog and write our thoughts. I do think the ease of doing that has been lost and if we could strip it all away it’d be easier. Tie in the social commenting aspect of these platforms and it can be quite powerful.
I certainly know what you mean about sometimes having short thoughts that don’t seem to warrant putting on your site. I’m looking for another outlet too… if I have the time!
I love that quote. I totally agree, sometimes it feels like there’s barely enough time for true “blogging” – it’s become such a numbers game! I think I’ll start using G+ for mini blog posts, thanks for this š
Altho G+ is integrating itself more into websites these days, like facebook and others, so you can also comment on blogs with your social accounts now.
I agree that a blog is surplus to requirements for garnering a following, and we might be better served building a large following on a social media platform instead. Any following can be used in much the same way as blogs are used at the moment.
But I sometimes get very annoyed that I put lots of effort into twitter and other networks just for it to pass into the ether, and have very little medium- to long-term effect for me without constantly supplying new micro-content. Even blogging a simple paragraph or a single photo can bring someone from the web to my site, so why should I give it to social networking for no return, when it could be introducing a new reader to the bigger, more useful and informative pieces on my site?
It could well be a case of six and two-threes, but I personally think the best use of a blog is when it is strapped to an existing website with a specific purpose and the relevant content on the blog is used to introduce the target audience to the rest of the site.
It’s certainly a frustration producing content that soon disappears off people’s screens, but that’s a opportunity in itself I think.
I think we’ll see the rise of snapchat type media in the future.
I think, ( for my country ) perception is very important.
They see as an amateur about all blogs. This is sometimes problem but also advantage. We passed through difficult stages. We are hope for new period. I think, it will be change their perception.
Also i have ask to you. What do you think local language blogs? Thanks all!..
I totally agree with you.