Will Blogging Still Be Effective in 2022?
Blogging. Many companies have jumped on board after years of influencers and creatives making a name for themselves through blogs. After all, blogging is a way to get personal with your readers and to show that you are a trustworthy expert in your field. Over the years, ways of engaging with potential clients have evolved to include Facebook groups, Insta stories, vlogs, podcasts, and even TikTok. Has long-form writing become obsolete? Is blogging still relevant? Will blogging still be effective in 2022? We sure hope so, because we’ll still be doing it!
Okay, so we don’t just hope so–we’re sure of it.
How Do We Know Blogging Is Still Effective?
Blogging has continued to stay relevant and effective, no matter how many new social and promotional platforms arise. In fact, websites with blogs have 434% more indexed pages than websites without them. Indexed pages are pages that Google bots have crawled through, determined are relevant to users, and decided to save and potentially share in search results. If we were to turn this into a math equation, it would look like this:
Blogging + Google Bots = Your Website in Search Results
Yes! You want this! The more original content you have on your website that is relevant to your field, the more Google will promote you organically. Of course, you have to make sure you are writing the right kind of blogs.
What Are the “Right” Kind of Blogs? How Do You Blog Effectively?
Not all blogs are created equal. When you sit down to write a piece of content, you need to ask yourself, “What do my readers or potential clients want to know about?” It’s easy to come up with a list of SEO keywords and write blog posts around them, but if those posts are not actually addressing real questions your potential clients are asking, they won’t give your website the same kind of boost as genuinely helpful content will.
Here’s a useful tip: type a question word + a keyword into a Google search box and Google will show you a list of auto-completed questions–aka, the most commonly searched-for questions around your keyword.
You also want to make sure to format your blogs the way readers read and the way Google bots understand.
What is the Smartest Way to Format Blog Posts?
Think about the habits of today’s readers. Most people tend to skim–and Google bots are certainly “skimming,” which means you need to do two important things:
1. Make your topic obvious from the get-go
2. Use concise paragraphs with clear headings
Blogs are not 10-page papers for English Lit professors. Do not write like Charles Dickens, who was paid by the word. Blogs are a way for you to tell your story in a clear and engaging way so that readers can easily glean the most relevant information while building a relationship with your brand.
Blogs should be a simple reading experience, but they do still involve plenty of work for the writer. Which brings us to our next question:
Do You Have To Be a Writer To Write a Blog?
Technically, no. Anyone can write a blog! Depending on your website platform, it can be as simple as going to the back end and clicking “create new post.” There are many guides out there on how to write a blog post. Even if you never thought of yourself as a writer, as long as you are honest and looking to engage and share with your readers, your personality will shine through and keep your readers reading!
That said, blogging requires a certain time commitment–time that you may rather spend on your actual business. You also may not feel that you are telling your story as well as you would like–or maybe you just really don’t like writing. If that’s the case, hiring a professional (such as the experts at Thump Local) to handle blogging and other content writing is a route many businesses take.
However you decide to blog, you should feel confident knowing that blogging is still effective in 2022 and will likely continue to be relevant for many more years to come!