All of my clients have been experiencing the same thing: Their blog viewership is way down over the last year (or two). My response? I’m not surprised. (And no, it’s not because blogging is dead. It’s because it’s shifting… and I’m having many convos with clients these days about how we need to shift with it.)

What social media has that blogging doesn’t

Think about the last two years of social media. TikTok exploded in the States. Instagram got Reels. And pretty much all of us are consuming more content on social media than ever before.

Social media does a few things that blogs don’t (always) do:

• It lets us be voyeurs and observers into other people’s lives
• It lets us see into multiple different experiences, events, and behind-the-scenes of many people’s days in a short span of time
• It feels like a low time commitment buy-in in exchange for free entertainment

That last one is more of a false perception than reality… We all know that it’s actually pretty easy to wind up wasting many minutes and even hours of time a day on social media.

But with social media, you don’t have to search for a blog post on Google, or track it down on someone’s profile, or type a URL into a web browser—and then spend several minutes reading just ONE piece of content. You just open an app and start consuming multiple stories, snippets, and pieces of content all at once.

So it makes sense that blogs are suffering a bit numbers-wise these days, yeah? They’re long-form content in an environment that isn’t a social media platform. They’re being all “uncool” as Countess Luann would say, and here’s why…

This needs to change when it comes to blogging…

The common advice for business blogs for years has been to create content that educates and adds value into your reader’s lives. “Write posts that educate, inspire, and answer questions,” the blog gurus have said. But, I would argue that’s not the most important thing for your blog content anymore. At least, not entirely.

Instead, it’s important that we think about how we can bring those attributes from social media over to your blog content. People want to see MORE behind-the-scenes, more family stories, more exclusive content they can’t find anywhere else (i.e. not on other blogs, and not even on social media).

They want to see more personal content and hear about your experiences with overcoming challenges or celebrating big life/business milestones. And they want to consume it quickly and easily, like they do on social media.

So, here are my top tips for blog content in 2022:

• Share more personal, behind-the-scenes & real life updates and moments. (This is the most important one!)
• Write in short paragraphs & sentences, and use bullet point lists, headers, & images frequently to break up the content and make it more consumable (like, you guessed it, social media feeds!).
• Make it juicy and desirable to read—in other words, don’t just write the same blog post you’ve seen 100 other times… write something with a new take or a personal story, something with edge, personality, and YOU in it.
• Make it easy for people to get to—thank goodness Instagram is making our lives as blog writers a LITTLE easier by letting us little ol’ nobodies add link stickers to stories. Take advantage! And add a newly published post directly to your IG profile link for a few days. You want people to not have to think too much or take more than 1-2 steps in order to get to your blog content (and things like Linktree give them just one more unnecessary step). You should also link new posts in your newsletters, FB posts, and LinkedIn posts if possible.
• Always lead readers somewhere else. Link to related posts in a new blog post. Add a call-to-action at the end to grab a freebie or join your newsletter or visit your shop. The point of blogs is to introduce people to you/your brand and keep them clicking around and wanting to keep in touch. Again, make it easy for them to do so by inviting them to stick around in every single post you write, even if it feels weird.

Oh, and a bonus tip: Your blog posts don’t need to be 2,000+ words for the SEO gods to smile down on you. I keep hearing people share this?!

And it’s just not true. (And… people don’t really want to read 2,500-word blog posts every week, let’s be real.) If you’re in the 1,000 word ballpark, you’re just fine.

What blog/content questions have been on your mind?

I would love to hear them in a comment below, or just hear your thoughts about blogging in general!  But if you tell me blogging is dead, we’re going to have to just agree to disagree, lol.

And if you’re reading this like, “Shoot, blogs have gone down in viewership in the last two years? I have hardly blogged AT ALL in the last two years…” I can help!  Contact me here or fill this out if you’d like to discuss getting support with your blog and content strategy. 

Your blog numbers might not be what they once were, but if we can get the RIGHT eyes on your website (and to hang around for a while), that’s a big win.