What would a world with blogs written by robots look like? What does the future of blogging look like? Many people have claimed that in the future, robots will jeopardize jobs in many different industries. Instead of human journalists and human doctors, there will be robot journalists and robot doctors. Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant are AI robots that use human speech to answer questions. In the future, it is estimated that 50% of search will be voice search. How then, can you write for a human, when you want the AI to reference your content when someone does a voice search?
Blogging for the Future
Blogging relies on human connections. Blogging also relies on emotions. Any type of robot can’t provide either. Humans are the only ones that have the perception that is required for complex interactions. Interactions between humans are built on many components that robots can’t rely on.
Most importantly, it is only the human brain that is sophisticated enough to interpret and react accordingly to received messages. What a robot may decide is correct, a human would reason differently as a human largely relies on their emotions to respond to another human; it’s more personal and memorable. Emotions are key when making human connections. All of this is why blogging for the future will rely strongly on humans, not robots.
The early days of blogging, back when the first blog was written in 1994, were for self-expression and were a simple mode of communication for people. As blogging took off, it became a powerful voice of authority. In 1999, there were a mere 23 blogs published online. By 2006, there were 50 million. Now, there are more than 440 million blogs published online. Blogs are able to create an easy way to gain more exposure and promote the brand. With over 409 million people reading a little more than 21.9 million pages each month, connecting with customers has never been easier. It is important to know how to retain and gain customers through five main components that can help create quality blogs.
1Substance
The written content of the blog is important to attract customers. The information included in the content is the primary way people learn and absorb information. The content of the blog needs to answer questions and provide needed information in order to better help customers make decisions. If stuck, simply ask the readers of the blog about content to use. No one will know better what content should be included in the blogs than the customers themselves. What do you think customers want to read? Writing down questions customers might have and turning those into blogs is a good way to create content for the blog.
Make sure that the content within the blog is helpful and informative. Writing original content helps make the blog more personal for the customers as they know the information obtained is not from another source and the blog is keeping true to information given. Writing the right content engages customers and attracts them to your website. Including a good topic with good information shows expertise in your field, making customers who read the blog more willing to return.
2 Driving Traffic
A blog is a collection of articles, keywords, and expertise that any search engine optimization (SEO) campaign needs. The right topic and keywords used in the blog attract customers to the website when searching on the internet. Focus on creating strong titles and relevant keywords to rank higher on search engines and invite more customers to read the blog. The amount and natural use of the keywords will increase the number of visitors to the website.
As the technology, mainly AI, progresses it’s important to answer questions people would ask. More and more search is turning to voice and people are asking direct questions like “What is SEO?” Google or Alexa answer questions with a direct answer. This makes it important to drive traffic to the website.
The real trick will be turning traffic into conversions and being found for questions like “Where is the nearest ____ store?” on search engines. Ranking high on search engines is critical for customers to see and click on the website when it shows up in a search. It has been discovered that 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results. The more the website is featured in search engines, the more traffic the website will get.
The frequency as to which you publish also drives traffics. Remain consistent as to when blogs are posted and how many blogs are posted online. With a consistent blog posting schedule, customers will have a better knowledge as to when to return to your website. Mainly it is important to answer questions customers have when searching online.
Inserting answers into the blog makes it easier for customers to find the blog and read it in order for their questions to be answered. Look around through comments, emails, and other sources to find questions that keep coming up from customers. Answering questions in a blog drive more traffic to the website thanks to creating more information customers need to make decisions. The more questions that are answered, the better the chance customers will return to the site that is providing quality answers.
3 Social Media
Ask the question: If someone looking for great content came across your blog, would they share your blog posts? Blogging and social media use to be separate. Now, blogging and social media complement each other. Use a blog to enrich your social media with long-form posts while using social media to promote your blog, creating more clicks to the website. Include links to social media accounts to allow customers to follow you on social media. If they like what is posted, they are more likely to read and share more blogs. Blogs are a great way to help inform social media posts and receive customer engagement.
You can drive high-quality engagement from customers by promoting the blog on social media. Customers can share a post they are interested in on social media, creating more traffic to your website and blogs. Share buttons included in blog posts are a natural way to let customers share information in the blogs that they find the most interesting. If a blog post is not worth sharing, it’s not worth writing.
4 Customers
How do you attract loyal readers? Blogging offers a great opportunity to connect with customers more. An open comments section allows customers to give feedback on a blog post. Customers can say how they feel about the post, allowing for improvements on future blogs that are focused on what the customer wants.
With feedback from customers, future blogs can be changed and edited as needed to write higher-quality blogs for your customers. The customers needed to feel a sense of trust. Give them the needed information to help them make their decisions better. Customers consume content before making a decision. The content within the blog needs to be of higher quality to better help them. Attracting consistent customers isn’t always easy.
Hard work and a lot of effort need to go into the process of attracting more customers. This can be crafting a catchy headline that triggers curiosity by not giving out much information, inviting customers to find out more. Or this can be consistently creating compelling blog posts, creating a reason for customers to come back for more quality content. When you create high-quality blogs posts consistently, customers will be more willing to return to your website and read your content because they find it informative and useful. Websites with consistently high-quality content experience a larger traffic growth.
5 Results
Sometimes, it can be easy to doubt the value of blogging when you’re not seeing results quickly. But, persistence and patience make all of the effort worth it. There is a highly greater chance of being ranked highly on search engines if the website features a blog. 55% of bloggers report positive results from blogging.
As the message of ‘quality over quantity is becoming more important, more time is spent writing the blog posts. The more time that is spent creating quality content and promoting the blog, the more it pays off. There is a clear focus on quality blog posts, to ensure more customers remain interested in the content.
It used to be that as many blogs as possible would be written and posted. As blogging has changed over the years, more see the benefit of blogging less often, but spending more time writing blog posts.
Compared to years in the past, there is a higher percentage of high-density blogs, those that are more than 2,000 words, and a lower percentage of low-density blogs, those that are fewer than 500 words. In 2017, 30% of bloggers reported having strong marketing results, which is up 20% from the previous year. Many are seeing rewards from their efforts and are meeting their goals, whatever they might be.
Robots do not have control over the future of blogging. They don’t have what is needed for quality blogs to be written. Blogging relies strongly on human connections and emotions. A human is the best at providing both to create a high-quality blog post and retain and gain customers.
Blogging can be incredibly valuable and for a variety of reasons. It can attract desired customers through informative content, make content shareable, build customer engagement, obtain desired goals and results. Combining the five components of blogging discussed above, will help the future of blogging. Follow the five main components involved in blogging and increase the chances of retaining and gaining customers.
The blogosphere that began in 1994 has immensely involved and will continue to evolve, creating a way to better interact with customers with quality blog content. Customers can now expect great content that provides them the valuable information that will help them better make decisions. There are many blogs out on the internet, which creates a high competition. You need to do what you can to obtain the desired results.
How are you going to make your blog stand out from the rest?