Is Blogging Dead Or Just Behaving Differently?

A lot of the people who know me on social media as a blogger. And that’s fair because for the past 15 years or so I have been writing traditional blogs. A while ago I added up the number of blog posts I had done and it came to over 2500.

During the past few years, however, I have had some personal things get in the way of my normal blogging output. So instead, of putting in the hard core time it takes to create credible full length blogs in the 1500-2500 word range, I started experimenting with writing in a shorter format.

Since I did that I started to notice a real uptick in the number of people who would read and engage with my posts.

Why Would That Be?

The fact that they were right there and you didn’t have to go anywhere to read them. Plus the fact that they were no more than a few hundred words (400-500) and that they were focused on a single issue made it all that much easier for people to take the time to read, absorb and even comment.

My reasoning for doing this was that I was starting to believe that people are generally reluctant to spend a lot of time in any one place when they are on line. It’s a combination of actually having less time, and than ever shortening attention span that social media, by its very nature, encourages.

Then of course, there is the competition, mainly in the form of podcasts where people can get real indepth exploration of a topic and actually be doing other things at the same time.

This, as it turns out, isn’t just a personal belief, but a trend that I have had verified by a couple of people I know who analyze these things for a living and a couple others who do a lot of reading on line.

What About Long Format Blogging?

As far as blogging goes, my thinking is that people, in their desire to maximize the time they spend on line, would much rather get a slap upside the head or warm hug than a full body massage, so to speak.

Then when I started to look around, I saw that the main social media sites understood this (or maybe even caused it) and increased the allowable limits for text in individual posts. Because their interest was in traffic that’s certainly one way to build it.

It’s A Whole New Ball Game.

What this has done for me is given me a whole new kind of game to play here. So far, on personal and politicial posts, it has worked just fine. I have managed to hit 50,000 or more views on LinkedIn several times.

I’m still experimenting with how to communicate business ideas in this format, and that’s a little bit trickier because I have to back myself out of the conditioned mode of operation which I incorporated for years, and subdivide  multi-faceted explanations into bite sized chunks.

But fear not, I will figure it out and as I have often said about anything to do with communications, half the fun (or maybe more) is getting there.

The bottom line is that I’ve arrived at a place where I no longer feel the need to write long format posts, because the number of potential readers in that areas is diminishing quantity.

Smart blogging sites like  Biz Catalyst, (where I am a featured contributor)  have also glommed onto this, and have not set minimum limits for the posts they publish.

This is not to say that there isn’t a market or a place on line for longer format posts, because I believe there is. But I also believe it’s shrinking and from my point of view, I would much rather be fishing where the majority of the fish are.

Sorry,  I’m a marketing guy and that’s just how we think.