Is Blogging Dead?
Is blogging still a thing? Has it survived in a world of vlogging, TikTok, and Reels? With the immediacy of internet culture and the growing bias towards shorter content, it can be easy to catch yourself asking ‘Is blogging dead?’ or is there still a landscape for long-form blogs? But the answer is that blogging is well and truly ALIVE!
If you aren’t already blogging for your business, then we’re here to persuade you of all the ways that starting a blog will boost your marketing campaign and your business!
The Importance Of Blogging For Your Business
The world of blogging contains so many different niches, that no matter your area of industry, there is room for you! Whether you are a designer, a computer scientist, or an orchestra conductor, no matter your field, there is always an audience for your written content!
For those asking ‘is blogging dead?’, we want to assure you that blogging is NOT a dead industry. Studies have found that in 2020, 77% of all internet users read blog posts as a regular part of their internet habits. More so - the same study has found that blogs containing photo imagery actually perform 94% better than blogs that are purely text copy. As a photographer, this puts you in a beautiful position! Whether you are going to be creating photo-blogs, or educational blogs, using your blog page as an opportunity to showcase more of your portfolio will benefit the blog’s performance!
As you get started on your blog, you might want to check out some of our available resources to help direct you. Our articles How Often Should You Blog as a Wedding Photographer and How to Write SEO Friendly Blog Posts as a Wedding Photographer are great places to start!
Why are Blogs Important for your Business?
There are several reasons that maintaining a blog will benefit your business:
360° Cohesive Marketing
Your blog posts will become the cornerstone of your 360° marketing campaign. Every time you have a shoot, you can use the images to create a blog post that highlights your new work. Once the blog post is live, this gives you new material to share across your Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook channels.
For social media, start by creating beautiful graphics that will drive users to your blog URL. Your blog then serves as the drawbridge to draw potential clients from your social channels and on to your website, taking them one step closer to your booking page!
Shareability
Blogs are some of the top shared content in the online space! So, is blogging dead? Absolutely not! The fact that people are sharing blogs so frequently is only further proof of their value, since not only are they being read, but they are being actively digested and enjoyed enough to want to pass them along to others. From a marketing and exposure standpoint, this is amazing news!
Traffic Generation
Studies have shown that there is a direct correlation between the number of blog posts on a webpage and the website traffic. In fact, there is a steep jump in Google traffic once a certain threshold of indexed pages are made - and the easiest way to add indexed pages to your website is through blogs.
Trust Equity
Another 2020 study about blogging trends, found that blogs were valued as the 5th most trusted source of accurate information online. This is a huge deal! In a world where the internet can be overwhelming with contradictory information, blogs still hold their course as a trustworthy and valuable source of information.
From a business or brand perspective, your blog is a space to develop trust equity with potential future clients. It is a space to develop your tone, establish your credibility as an authority in whatever industry you are a part of, and build the foundation of trust equity with your potential future clients that will ultimately lead to them booking you! According to digital spend experts, 60% of online purchases are made after reading a persuasive blog post about the product! Reading a blog post about a product or service creates buy in, and is more likely to generate a sale.
Building Your Email List
One of the key reasons that blogging is SO important, is that it is yet another avenue to build your email list.
Building your email list is vital. While amassing social media followers feels important, we’d actually consider social followers to be ‘cold leads’ in comparison to your email list. See, anyone who has provided their personal information and email address has actively bought into your brand. Comparatively, they are a ‘hot lead’ since they have actively made their interest in your business known, so much so that they are voluntarily asking to receive more information. In terms of converting website views into sales, capturing people through your email list is a crucial step.
There are two common ways that businesses use their blog content to build their email list. One is by creating a pop-up through a tool such as OptinMonster, Sendin Blue, or Leadpages. These forms allow people to quickly share their information with you and get back to reading the blog article.
The other is through created ‘gated content’, this involves teasing your reader with the first paragraph of your blog, but ‘gating’ the rest of the article until they provide their personal information. They exchange their contact information in order to get access to your exclusive blog content.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is every blogger’s dream: a simple way to make money overnight through promotional content. In becoming an Affiliate, you have the means to generate an income simply through writing tactful and promotional links into your copy. It is a simple and effective way to get even more out of your blog copy.
Is Blogging Dead: The Blog Evolution
While blogging is not dead, it is safe to say that as an industry, it is evolving. Blogs are getting malleable, taking on new forms, and adapting to suit current audiences. These days, blogging is best practiced in conjunction with different forms of media - it should be one part of a wider digital strategy.
Some of the different types of blogs that are stepping into the gap left by traditional long-form blogs include:
Photoblogs - Photoblogs are paving the way as a contemporary blog alternative. If you are a wedding photographer, a photoblog is a perfect way to demonstrate the flavor of each new shoot you book, with a small amount of copy that is refined specifically for SEO purposes.
Videoblogs - Or ‘vlogs’ are another brilliant way to establish yourself as an authority in your industry. For wedding photographers, this looks like educational or informational videos and positioning yourself as a resource in the wedding industry. After all, ‘how to’ searches on Youtube are increasing by 70% year over year - meaning that there is an active demand for educational content. However - if you want to get the most out of your Vlog content, then we recommend that each video blog is coupled with a written blog piece that can serve as a marketing arm for your video.
Micro-Blogs, ie Social Media - Micro-blogging is the art of creating longer-form, information-packed captions on your social media channels. The aim is that your social media channels become informative resources in their own right. While this is brilliant, the easiest way to micro-blog is actually to pull stand-alone extracts from your existing blog content! We recommend trying to create at least 4-5 Instagram captions from each blog post. These captions help in the cyclical pattern of your 360 marketing campaign, by ultimately drawing users back there!
Blogging’s Not Dead: So Get Started Today!
While you might never have envisioned yourself as a blogger, you will be grateful for starting one!
Writing a blog doesn’t need to be hard work. Set yourself incremental challenges to learn the practice of blog writing, and don’t be afraid to build your content slowly. It is better to be blogging consistently, than sporadically. Why not start building up a well of content now, and plan a strategic release down the line?
According to Orbit Media, the average length of a blog post is roughly 1236 words and should take 2-3 hours to write. That said, since you want your blogs to hit the sweet spot of the Google Algorithm, don’t be afraid to run a little over: studies at Backlinko showed that the average first-page result on Google contains 1447 words.
Here at Second Fiddle, we focus on helping wedding photographers get noticed by their dream clients by combining the power of blogs and Pinterest. If you’re a wedding photographer, check out these 10 Photography Topics to Write About to Attract Your Dream Wedding Client. And if we’ve convinced you that blogging’s not dead, but you just don’t have the time to do it, take a look at our process to see if we’d be a good fit to take on blogging for you!
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