With the popularity of YouTube short videos, TikTok, and Instagram reels, it seems like all people want are videos, and short ones at that. Does this mean the end of blogging is near?
Blogging isn’t going anywhere, but it’s changing. Blogs were like journals a decade ago. Today, they are more similar to digital newsletters. They are focused, polished, and seen as elements of a content marketing strategy.
Blogging will change in multiple ways
Generative AI is becoming popular, which means storytelling will come to the fore. It can be challenging to recognize AI-generated content. AI tools don’t have the capacity to tell stories yet, so demand for such authentic and genuine content is on the rise.
Social media vs. content management system platforms
The fact that bloggers need to use social media like Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and Pinterest is undisputed. These platforms are an excellent way to build and engage with your audience. However, these platforms’ users are not your audience. The medium can shut you down at any time due to policy changes, algorithm changes, restrictions, etc.
It’s risky to build your whole online presence on a platform you have little control over. This isn’t the case with a content management system. Ideally, you would set up a blog on WordPress and use traffic from social media to drive visitors to it. Then, you can get them to sign up for your email list.
Basics of a Successful Blog
Your choice of blogging platform and your blog content are equally important. WordPress is the most popular CMS software, powering almost half of all websites. WordPress hosting is obviously a suitable option for this platform. Cloud WordPress hosting, in particular, has several benefits, including reliability, scalability, flexibility, and performance.
Cloud hosting makes scaling your resources based on traffic fluctuations easy. This means that during traffic spikes, your website can handle an increased load without performance issues, and you only pay for the resources you use.
It distributes your website across numerous servers, minimizing the risk of downtime in case one server fails. If one does, another can step in to keep your site online.
Cloud hosting often utilizes content delivery networks (CDNs) to distribute your site’s content to various data centers worldwide. This helps reduce latency and ensures faster load times for visitors across different geographic locations.
Finally, it often provides more control over your environment. You can choose specific server configurations, install custom software, and manage various aspects of your hosting environment.
WordPress does not require any coding or technical skills. Its block editor makes creating beautiful pages child’s play.
Integrating videos easily
We mentioned the importance of videos earlier. You can upload videos by using the Editor’s Video block or embed them from external sites.
If you choose the first option, your site will host the video directly, and the video might slow it down. The better option is embedding videos from YouTube or Vimeo. All you need to do is paste your video link into the WordPress Editor. Then, the video will be embedded automatically. Ads will not show up.
Appealing themes and content
WordPress’ multitude of free and paid themes come in soothing or vibrant colors that help tell a story, depending on the desired effect. What’s more, the CMS can be used to make content easy to skim. This is a helpful feature because no one wants a wall of text. Your posts should let readers find necessary information easily.
To make your posts scannable, use images (photos, art, infographics), headings, sub-headings, charts, tables, and graphs. You can achieve all of this with WordPress.
Final thoughts
Social media make dramatic changes that impact ad performance. The pandemic transformed consumer behavior. Skyrocketing inflation and concerns about a recession changed the business landscape, both on and offline. WordPress has survived COVID, inflation, and recession. It’s not unreasonable to expect it to continue being the most popular blogging platform in the years to come.