The Death of Blogging

Blogging. Like all things, it will eventually die. Not totally, but we are witnessing the beginning of it right now. Why? People are growing tired of reading articles from so called “experts” who really have no credentials.

We are beginning to see way too many people attempt to write when they have absolutely no business writing. There ARE great bloggers out there. They DO know what they are talking about. Unfortunately, those authors are far and in between. The great ones will survive, the others will fade.

Blogging isn’t for everybody. Too many people are in blogging for all the wrong reasons. Reading many blogs, I am drawn to certain authors because of their authenticity, genuine nature and because they offer real life examples and advice that will help others learn.

Blogging to promote your company is one of the main reasons people grow sick of reading blogs. Blogs are beginning to be seen as spam. Industry experts are suggesting people write to help show their knowledge and expertise in the industry. My advice? If you can write and add value, then please do. If you can’t, then PLEASE don’t.

Let’s talk briefly about personal brand. I agree and disagree that it is important. I DO NOT believe it is essential for you to succeed in your field. Show up, do your job, do everything that is asked and more. If you do that, then you will be successful. Your BRAND is your SUCCESS.

Some of the best recruiters I know DO NOT blog, DO NOT tweet. They have their heads down and are busy doing their jobs. They aren’t busy trying to build their “personal brand”, but more interested in doing the job at hand.

Blogging does give you credentials. You do become more recognizable in the workplace. People will trust you can and will gain more customers and you build up more credibility. It may help you take you to the next level in your career. IF you are bad at it though, it could KILL your career. Speak up if you know what you are talking about. I encourage you. If not, stay away.

Information overload is where we are right now. If we continue down the path we are on, we will see the death of blogging and the idea of a personal brand. Stay tuned, but we are all witnessing the end. Want to help prevent it? Do the right thing- write if you have something to add and don't if you can't.

Comment by Derdiver on September 15, 2013 at 5:51pm: Will, nice.

Comment by Will Thomson on September 15, 2013 at 9:58pm: Thanks Derek. There has been too much junk out there lately.

Comment by Paul Alfred on September 16, 2013 at 8:10am: Google might differ with your opinion ... Blogging is not about if you are great writer then blog about something. Blogging is about expressing yourself and the internet allows for such expression ... Good or bad ...

Comment by Alasdair Murray on September 16, 2013 at 10:07am: I agree. I have always been a great advocate of only writing a blog when you feel passionately about a subject, have something important to say or maybe even occasionally try and inject a bit of humour into a world that often takes itself too seriously. However, day after day you see blog after blog entitled '10 reasons you should be doing this' or 'The 20 best ways to do that', plus the serial bloggers who have to churn out at least 3 or 4 blogs a week as part of their 'strategy' of being seen as some sort of social media guru (anagram of which incidentally is 'a ludicrous image'). I reckon out of every 100 blogs I browse through when vaguely intrigued by the title, I read maybe two or three. And don't get me started on infographics. They're even worse! In fact, I;d rather read a blog than scroll through an infographic but wouldn't feel bad if there were less of both.

Bloggers, be passionate, be informative, but don't just do it for the sake of being 'out there'.

Comment by Will Thomson on September 16, 2013 at 11:04am: @Paul- If you feel like expressing yourself, I am all for blogging. Unfortunatley, there are so many people out there that are writing stuff that isn't good advice that people don't care to read anymore. I HOPE that the trend changes.

@Alasdair- I like what you said "Bloggers, be passionate, be informative, but don't just do it for the sake of being 'out there'." Couldn't be said better. If you really see 100 blogs and read 3 or 4- the proof is in the pudding. That is astonishing.

Comment by Mitch Sullivan on September 18, 2013 at 9:08am: Hey, that's democracy for you.

I'd rather it this way than how it was before the Internet, when opinion was the exclusive preserve of those with friends in the media.

Plus, what makes this democracy of information really interesting is the ability to engage with the authors and challenge their thinking*.

* Except for those douchebags who moderate their blog comments.

Comment by Will Thomson on September 18, 2013 at 10:59am: Hey Mitch,

I am all for the expression of beliefs and thoughts. I am all for commenting. I wish there were more of it. Less people are commenting, less people are sharing because there is TOO MUCH information out there. I agree, the media is what we all used to have, which was very one sided. My concern is what @Alasdair said- many aren't even seen because of mass number of people self promoting. Do you see this happening or do you disagree strongly? I like when people challenge me and my thinking- even if I am incorrect. We all learn. The sadness is when things go unchallenged and even unnoticed. People will cease to write eventually in this type of forum.

Comment by Paul Alfred on September 18, 2013 at 11:18am: Hello Will, with the acquisitions being made by Yahoo and AOL of Huffington Post (as an example) Content is the name of the game and Blogging won't be dead anytime soon. Self expression is here to stay and you have tons of tools to filter out what you want to read or not want to read. There are tons of folks with hundreds of thousands of followers that no one's heard of. So there is something for everyone.

Comment by Valentino Martinez on September 18, 2013 at 11:59am: To say something so broad as blogging is dying suggests you see the vultures circling.

To blog or not to blog is not the question -- it is actually the answer and that's the beauty of it. Self-expression welcomes compliment and criticism.

Beauty and blog beauty are in the eye of the beholder. If you don't like what you see move on...it gets better as long as you don't get sidetracked by allowing yourself to get sidetracked.

Comment by Kelly Blokdijk on September 18, 2013 at 5:07pm: From my perspective there is an over-saturation of available content. We all have limited time to consume information related to our work or outside interests. That might also apply to adding comments once we do read something, whether we agree, disagree, like or dislike the content.

I'm a voracious reader of online content and enjoy finding an interesting, informative or entertaining blog as much as the next person. The problem is most content (these days) doesn't come close to meeting that criteria. Instead of feeling that my time was spent well, I end up frustrated that the quality of many blogs is so poor and the quantity of sort through to find the rare exception is simply too overwhelming.

There are far too many people jumping on the "brand you" bandwagon of "building your brand" and "branding yourself as an expert" that have zero intellectual capacity to convey credibility in their subject matter of choice. I agree with you, Will, that there are people blogging as if they are an authority of a topic or worse getting featured in a mainstream media publication as an expert, but they have no business writing or being quoted on that topic.

The abundance of bad advice and vapid information is astonishing. I'm not suggesting they don't have a right to express themselves, but it would be nice if, at a minimum, they could show a sliver of common sense and subject matter awareness before publishing for public consumption.

Another observation is a lack of writing ability many bloggers or mass media article writers display. It seems that between the elementary school level writing quality of many individual bloggers and the interest of creating catchy headlines and click-magnets, the collective pool of content is only serves to attract those unable to process or produce sophisticated or complex thoughts.

It is rare to find an original, thought-provoking concept written by a person with a unique point-of-view or different take on a topic. Instead we get served up recycled, tired and over-done subjects including banal lists and generic generalities and stereotype-ridden articles.

I wouldn't mind if that part of blogging died.

~KB @TalentTalks