Is Blogging Still Relevant in the Digital Age?

How can blog writers compete with 30-second reels, videos, and podcasts?

The term “Blog” was first coined by author Jorn Barger, editor of Robot Wisdom, an early website that focused on subjects of AI , technology, and Barger’s passion for the author James Joyce. Barger likely had no idea that he’d be ushering in an entire era of internet content when he coined this term. In the early days of the internet, it truly felt like the wild west. Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of HTML could take advantage of this new frontier and build their own website. Suddenly, many people became overnight sensations right from the comfort of their home computer with a well-written blog. I certainly tried to get my own piece of the pie, and was fascinated with the idea of creating my own brand. Of course, many of the blogs and websites I created then were hilariously niche and lacked any kind of real direction.

Do people even read blogs anymore?

The short answer is, Yes! However, as a form of content creation, blog writing seems to have lost its allure. It’s nearly impossible to get the attention of people with their eyes glued to their phones anymore, and I can’t blame them. From videos of paint-filled bottles smashing in an explosion of colour, to reels of AI-voiced confessionals overlayed with Minecraft parkour, to hilarious videos of cats, dogs, bar fights, and TV clips, there’s eye-candy at every flick of your thumb. How can writers compete with content like the Hydraulic Press Channel crushing a pile of dinner plates!? It’s total anarchy out there!

The fact of the matter is we live in an age of high-speed, low-quality entertainment. Article writing in today’s digital era seems best suited for seasoned journalists, or relics like Jorn Berger and myself. Is it just me or is there something wildly depressing about that? Is there still value in writing articles or essays? How can you grab the attention of someone you want to entertain or educate with your writing? Does memoir have to be synonymous with vlogging to pique anybody’s interest anymore?

I’ve been thinking a lot about these questions as I reflect on a few of my own failed blogs over the years:

Dan’s Digi Database
2000 – 2004
My first ever website I created was a Digimon blog fansite when I was just 14 years old. It was a hilariously bad blog site with an abundance of childish fan art, fan fiction, and a full database of all the different types of Digimon & characters. Although I learned an abundance of invaluable life skills experimenting with this, obviously this was a passion of mine that dwindled in my teen years.

FishWeb
2004 – 2006
A blog based loosely off a bunch of my angsty old livejournal posts. I thought I was insanely clever with the pun “Fish” in the title, because my last name is Pike! Get it? This really didn’t go much of anywhere though, because nobody knew I was writing it, and I didn’t share or post this anywhere. I eventually lost out the domain name when I didn’t renew it. It now belongs to an interactive Michigan map of fresh-water fish in the great lakes. Had I held onto this domain I could have sold it!

The Upchuck Dumptruck
2004 – 2008
This is where I thought I was truly clever. Oh yes. Let’s rhyme upchuck with dumptruck and call that a blog! This was an early blog of mine where I tried to find my voice as an author for the first time. I think I got there in the end, but in reality it ended up being a bunch of endless negative ranting that made me look like an extreme pessimist.

The Book of Daniel
2008 – 2009
An extremely short-lived blog detailing the numerous mistakes I made up to this point in my life. I thought I’d go with a comedic /religious take on the book of Daniel in the bible, and how this would be wildly funny in contrast with my fall from Catholicism at the time, but I wasn’t ready to come out of the closet quite yet, and barely wrote enough content for this blog for it to even be considered one.

StigmataScript
2009 – 2012
Of course an aspiring writer creates a writing blog. I thought I was doing the writing community an enormous service, but in reality what I was preaching about the very things I wish I was doing more within my own writing. Often I used this blog as a way to trick myself into thinking I had the authority to talk about these things, when in reality I spent less time with my actual creative craft and more time TALKING about it. Once this realization hit me I quickly understood that I needed to focus more on my creative writing craft rather than preaching about it.

BetterWeekly
2017 – 2020
After years of focusing on my creative writing craft, I decided that it was time to start a new blog that I thought would surely take me to the big times. BetterWeekly was certainly one of my more successful ventures, but in reality I realized this blog about mental health issues and creativity blocks were really just me writing about my own internal mental health struggles. Rather than actually seeking out the help of mental health professionals, in true stubborn form, I thought I could write my way out of them. A lot of therapy and one ADHD Diagnosis later, I realized that this kind of blog just wasn’t my passion anymore.

Blog writing isn’t dead.

… but maybe Lifestyle Blogging should be put on the endangered species list?

After recently completing an SEO certification course, I’ve come to understand that blog writing is not in fact, dead as many people would claim it to be, though it may be endangered as we enter into the new era of AI generated text. Search engines have long served the public by helping the average person find the right answers to the questions they search for, and search engines absolutely still love blog and article content (for now.)

As long as people keep using search engines, there will be websites to provide the most relevant information to the front page of Google. How then, do you get your blog to perform better in an era of digital distraction?

Well… that’s the very question I hope to pursue with this new blog.

In most of my research I’ve learned that you need to know your audience, trusting the best SEO strategies, and know your intentions with your brand and business. You can also gain better traction with your blog online by providing video or audio content. You also need to ask yourself, am I writing this for fun, or am I trying to improve my business and uplift my platform so I can earn money with my writing?

Unless you have an effective strategy and intentions with your blog, it’s likely to not perform as well as a blog that has an established brand and business.

So why bother with ANOTHER Blog?

Let’s resurrect the Lifestyle Blog (and hopefully learn to write more in the process.)

I really want to get my ass back at my keyboard to work on my writing craft, (I mean metaphorically, not that I literally use my ass to type anything) however, it’s been a number of years since I took the time to write non-fiction for a variety of reasons:

Firstly, after getting my adult ADHD diagnosis in 2021, it dawned on me that a great deal of my writing or creative pursuits were a symptom of what I call ‘overnight ambition syndrome.’ I’m certain most of my closest friends and family have heard me go on about my rapid flights of fancy, many of which were the result of procrastination in one form or another.

Secondly, I simply did not have the time to even consider non-fiction writing in the past few years because I’ve been too busy moving across Canada multiple times, dealing with relationship breakups, and planting new roots after moving back to my hometown for the first time since 2015.

As I’ve grown and learned more about myself in my undiagnosed ADHD years, for me blog writing used to be a fantastic source of quick-hit accomplishment dopamine. In the case of my Stigmata Script and Better Weekly blogs, they were a means to get my thoughts down while others might benefit from not repeating the same mistakes I once made. I see value in that still to this day, and maybe my ideal reader is just a younger version of myself that hoped he’d stumble upon a blog online how to solve one particular problem or another.

I come from an era where blogs were a great source to discover new ideas, new content, and or learn a thing or two about the world from someone else’s perspective. Perhaps that’s what I hope will come of this new blog writing venture.

Now that I’m writing through my own website, danieljamespike.ca, I’m less constrained with trying to write within the confines of niche blog, and more inspired now to write about anything that interests me at any given moment. (Another bonus for my ADHD Writer Brain!)

At the end of the day, the most important thing for me is that this blog gets me writing again.

Perhaps in that pursuit, this blog may serve to inspire you too.