What is the Future of Blogging?

Blogging plays a big role in today’s business landscape. After all, blogging is the foundation of search engine optimization; without content, it would be difficult to rank in search engine results pages or be discovered by potential clients and customers.

Over the past decade, we’ve seen the blogosphere go through dramatic phases and changes. Microblogging and social media have changed the way we share and consume content. Starting a blog, building an online presence, and optimizing your content is an attainable goal for anyone willing to put in the work and time. But what is the future of blogging, and what can we expect? Read on to learn more about where blogging is headed.

The Proliferation of Drag-and-Drop

Long gone are the days when you needed to play with code to get the designs and layouts the way you wanted. Even with thousands of customizable templates, web design can be very complicated for the average person. Today, there are many tools that aim to put the power of developers into the hands of non-technical people, spawning the proliferation of drag-and-drop builders.

A drag-and-drop builder is a tool that allows you to simply drag elements onto a page and rearrange them as you see fit. You can drag blocks of text to change formatting and move images to change layout. WordPress alone has a handful of drag-and-drop plugins that make website design easier than ever.

These user-friendly tools allow anyone to make their design dreams a reality. In the future, we can expect hosting companies and CMS platforms to build out their own internal drag-and-drop features, or to buy out existing tools to add to their repertoire of features.

Bigger Platforms Buying out Smaller Platforms

Currently, there are multiple content management systems that make blogging a synch: WordPress, Squarespace, Weebly, and Wix are among them. However, moving forward, it wouldn’t be surprising if bigger platforms started to buy out the smaller, niche platforms.

We see these types of acquisitions happen often. Facebook purchased Instagram. Twitter bought Vine. Yahoo bought Tumblr. And recently, WordPress—which powers nearly one-third of the Web—purchased Tumblr from Verizon. These calculated moves allow bigger platforms to maintain a stronghold in the blogging and web design space.

Promoting With Influencers

The Web is oversaturated with content, and it’s become increasingly difficult for bloggers and business owners alike to get notice in such a crowded space. In the past, AdWords was one of the only effective tools for individuals to stand out from the crowd among search results. Today, many consumers ignore paid ads altogether, and bloggers need to be more creative with how they reach their audiences.

This is where influencer marketing comes in. This unique promotional tactic allows brands to partner with influencers in their industry to spread awareness. On the flipside, bloggers also need to work on becoming influencers themselves. Creating consistent content, maintaining social media, and engaging in dialogue are all important here.

Content Syndication

As previously mentioned, the content arena is overfilled. Getting your voice heard isn’t as easy as it used to be. This is where content syndication comes into play: this gets your content noticed in places where it’s more likely to be seen. For example, LinkedIn and Medium are two powerful platforms where content syndication is strong. Additionally, it helps boost your domain authority and SEO. Of course, there are pros and cons to content syndication that you should consider.

Generally speaking, with the right approach, it can help you as we move towards the future of blogging. After you’ve published a great piece of content, give it at least two weeks to be indexed by Google before publishing elsewhere. You should also refrain from re-publishing every article on your blog—focus on the in-depth pieces that add the most value are likely to be noticed and shared.