It’s been a long and fruitful journey for blogging. What we see and call modern blogging is a stark contrast from what it was two decades ago. From writing and sharing content online to using social media to boost blogging, the landscape has shifted entirely.
So what has changed?
Let’s take a look back to see how far we’ve come and what the future holds for bloggers.
1. Online Forums
Pioneer forums such as rec.humor.funny and mod.ber were the first forums to invent online journalism from the mid to late 1980s. By then content was being produced chaotically across various sites. And the primary purpose of these pioneer forums was to pool all these content into an organized and easy to access centralized database.
These platforms were like content malls. You got everything under one roof. Nowadays there still some blogs that maintain this concept like WordPress with a database of 18.7M blogs.
2. Online Journaling
In the mid-90s, the year was 1994 when Claudio Pinhanez invented the first blogging platform known as Online Diary. It was a creation of focused individuals within specific community groups.
Online Diary was a blog series of the daily activities, thoughts, feelings, and creations of writers which featured message boards to sample their readers’ views. 1994 ended with a bang, and Online Diary paved the way for our first ever blog by U.S freelance journalist, Justin Hall known as links.net.
By the late 90s, Jorn Barger coined the word weblog to represent online journaling in 1998. And what we refer to as blogging today was invented by Peter Merhotz in 1999 from the word weblog. By the end of New Year ’s Eve in 1999, we already had active 23 blogs.
3. Blogging
Blogging started gaining steam with media houses relying on blogs as their primary sources of news reporting. Bloggers began creating their forums and built robust networks to address issues in the society like development scandals which sparked heated debates and intense responses.
We had companies like Live Journal and Blogger enter into the spotlight. They focused on blending blogging with video and were the first pioneers of automated video with live blogging.
By 2001, Tech Crunch and Mashable were the first mainstream blogs of the 21st century.
4. Specialization
2002 was the year. It was sparked by the rise of blogs representing unified groups with common interests or lifestyle. The first blogs were by mommy bloggers and even now parenting blogs are still a rich niche.
Google AdSense joined the scene to allow bloggers to make money. Blogging became a business and a full-time gig. This gave rise to other bloggers like food bloggers, political bloggers, entertainment bloggers, and tech bloggers among others. Bloggers started monetizing their blogs successfully.
Come 2003, WordPress, Guardian, and Typepad were born which were aggregate platforms for bloggers and Guardian was the first to set the scene for live blogging.
5. Social Media Platforms
2005 marked the launch of social platforms like Youtube and Huffingpost. Media moved online and attracted a vast network with opinion blog posts. Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Microblogging services such as Posterous and Tumblr revolutionized blogging.
Everyone now has access to 3 or 4 blogs thanks to social media with 32M U.S citizens reading a blog daily.
By 2011, the gig economy was ripe with 152M people globally owning active blogs and 11% of bloggers earning fully from their blogs. Mainstream media and corporate started to adopt blogging as part of their inbound marketing efforts.
6. Differentiation
2012 saw the rise of giant guest blogging and publishing platforms like Medium and LinkedIn that shaped modern blogging. Competition just got stiffer as more and more blogs joined the scene. To stand out, you needed to create compelling, exciting and engaging content.
With 400 million blogs in Tumblr alone, driving awareness for your blog is quite an uphill task since you have tons of competition to beat.
Even now authority blogging and niche building are crucial and google only rewards blogs attracting high SERPs which are currently being dominated by corporate brands like Youtube, Medium, LinkedIn, etc.
Blogging has shifted from merely sharing content to an inbound marketing tactic with 68% of social media marketers incorporating blogging as part of their social media marketing strategy.
The Future of Blogging: What’s new for Blogging in 2019?
1. Vlogging
According to Cisco, videos will account for more than 80% of global traffic by 2021. You need to join the video wagon soon if you want to safeguard the future of your blog.
Adding videos as part of your blogging efforts has been shown to attract more viewers, boost traffic and is an effective way to increase sales.
More and more people are switching to videos and podcasts as an effective way to consume content. With our hectic lifestyles and an even shorter attention span, we want to have our content on the go.
2. Android Friendly Blogs
Mobile apps are the new trend and with more than half of the videos streamed online being viewed on mobile devices your blog design needs to be easily accessible and load naturally across all tech devices.
Vertical streaming is buzzing. You want to boost engagement with your blog, and if your readers are having trouble accessing content or engaging with your blog, you lose out on traffic. And in blogging traffic is everything.
3. Automated Blogging
There is so much content to put out there and a rush to cover every single niche. Blogging platforms are recruiting writers to chunk out numerous articles at the shortest time possible to maintain their high SERPs.
If your plate is full of responsibilities or you can’t send out blog posts are frequently as you want to, you should consider web blogging and website design software. You save time and money while meeting your blogging goals. Check out this squarespace review for all your blogging needs.
In the future, robots will create content for us. Amazing right? But before you get too excited, those content bots will lag when it comes to creating engaging and persuasive content which needs a human touch.
Bottom line:
It’s been quite a journey for blogging. Modern blogging is far from what we knew ten years ago. More than ever quality is king. Competition is stiffer, and the stakes are higher if you want to join the blogging industry.
You need to establish yourself as an authority with helpful and compelling content and your blog as the top of mind solution to your readers.
If you’re not dominating your niche, you’re out of the game.
