Blogs; the original home for the first wave of influencers in our generation. No matter the topic, blogs were a huge form of media that so many consumed. As the years have gone by and other social media platforms have emerged and grown substantially, influencer blogs have been put on the back burner.
Some OG bloggers are still super popular on social media today. Blogs such as In The Frow and A Pair and a Spare (to name a couple) still update their blog with content. Like many others, they have also gained popularity on other popular social media platforms.
Following on from the success of these bloggers, many tried to start a blog. It, eventually, got to the point where the market was suddenly over-saturated with people trying to get noticed and gain a following. Readers were inundated with so much content – it was a surprise that anything was even being read.
Today, audiences are moving from more traditional forms of blogging to micro-blogging. Micro-blogging leans towards content posted on Instagram, in Insta Stories or on Snapchat (although, that is nowhere near as popular as it once was). In the instance of micro-blogging, creators are often in competition with themselves. Should bloggers be surprised that audiences are choosing to access their content on Instagram when they’re adapting and creating content specifically for these platforms? By using the same content, but adapting it to suit so many different platforms, viewer rates and interactions are going to be down somewhere. I mean, who’s going to watch something on YouTube and then read your blog post on the same topic?
Lifestyle blogger, Jasmine Charlotte, believes, “People are ‘following’ blogs so much less and rely on social channels for blogs to be placed in front of them. But people are still reading, even if it is in a different way.”
Many diehard readers created blogs to share their thoughts and feelings on what they were reading but the market has started to shift. It may be easier for some to access a review on YouTube and opposed to reading a blog post on it (and vice versa). Others may prefer finding reviews on a book-themed Instagram account. The wonderful thing about the internet is that there is often an option for everyone.
Just like everything, readers and audiences follow trends. Beauty blogs were hugely popular in the early 2010s. They were the place to go to reviews on new and old products, colour swatches for makeup and nail polish and comparisons and dupes for high end/ drugstore products. Over the years, trends have changed, and audiences are now more likely to go to YouTube first to get their beauty news. Instagram is also now a popular resource for short makeup tutorials.
The Digital Marketing Institute reported that around seventy-four percent of consumers trust social networks when it comes to purchasing decisions. Facebook still holds the top spot for effective marketing techniques, but YouTube is close on its trails.
This isn’t to say that blogs are an unnecessary resource. How many times have you googled a random recipe and there’s been so many useful blogs at your fingertips? Stepping away from industry-related blogs, many topics are only viewed when audiences have specifically searched for it – think recipes, beauty, product and luxury item reviews and DIYs. Many fashion-based influencers also utilise a blog as a resource to link items to their followers.
This just shows that there will always be a place in the market for blogs… audiences have their preferred method of consuming media and sometimes blogs provide just what they want. Speaking on a personal level, I found blogs extremely useful and educational when I was researching moving overseas for exchange through uni. While there were videos on YouTube, blogs seem to tell the whole story, rather than just showing off the lovely, aesthetic shots of their flats, their surroundings and their activities.
So, while blogs aren’t being utilised in the same way by readers and creators, they are evolving to fit the current social media landscape. For some influencer industries, blogging makes sense for their content but for others, there are other platforms that more suits the content they are creating.
Do you still read regularly read blogs? Let us know in the comments below.
