Blogging is Dead

Blogging as we know it is dead.

Content Factories

Two weeks ago I was introduced to a software package that allows you to write an original article of about 500 words, and then using a process that took me no longer than an hour, to create dozens, if not hundreds of variations of that same article for mass distribution on the Internet.

If you were to read one of these “variations” of that article, it wouldn’t read like something pieced together at all.  It would read just as if I wrote the article from start to finish.  Maybe if you had multiple variations of the article in front of you, you would be able to tell that the source article is the same.

I went in to test this software, thinking that it’s going to be a piece of crap and the crap that it pumps out is going to sound ridiculous and that no English-speaking person would ever read such an article from start to finish because it would make no sense grammatically, but I was wrong.  The dozens of articles do make sense, and they don’t sound like they’ve been pumped out by some software at all.

I was quite impressed by this software, and at the same time horrified.  How can a Blogger like myself compete with these content-factories that can literally pump out hundreds of articles per HOUR on any topic of interest you can think of utilizing outsourced talent overseas for pennies per article?

Blogs became so successful because they were able to pump out regular content on a daily basis whereas most corporate websites were updated just a few times a year.  The success of Blogs, especially with the search engines made them a big target for Internet marketers looking to make a buck.

However, Internet marketers for the most part aren’t passionate or even interested in producing quality content.  Why waste time creating a Blog with daily content when you can create 100 Blogs on 100 different topics with 100x as much content being pumped out on a daily basis?

It gets worse.

Flogs

The other thing that Blogs had going for them is credibility.  If a corporate website said that their gadget is amazing, people didn’t trust them.  If a Blogger said a gadget is amazing, people trusted them.  A message on a corporate site was seen as “marketing” but the same message on a Blog was seen as “more trustworthy”.

Then, one day someone decided to create a fake Blog to promote products.  They didn’t just stop with a biased opinion.  They created a fake Blog about a fake person with fake pictures, fake children and even fake comments in response to the Blog.  Lucy didn’t lose 25lbs taking Acai pills, because Lucy doesn’t exist.  She’s really the imaginary friend of Billy the affiliate marketer who invented Lucy to improve his conversion rates.

It gets worse.

Content Overload

I have no idea how they even go about measuring this, but I’ve read in several places now that it is predicted that there will be more content produced this year (2009) and published online than has been published in all of humanity up until now.  Meaning, if you took every book, article or any other form of written text ever written in recorded history all the way up until 2008, and you added up all the words of “original” content, in 2009 that number will double.

Still think Google and the other search engines, and even people are looking for “content”?

Content is king?

Think again.

There’s more content being pumped out than there are people to read it.  Content is as common as grass.

It gets worse.

Attention Deficit Disorder

Should we really call it a “Disorder” if everyone’s got it? 

My wife occasionally enjoys watching old movies from the 50’s and 60’s.  I’ll typically be working on something else in the same room while she watches them.  Today I realized that almost nothing ever happens in these movies.  It’s all just a bunch of people talking.

There are characters, usually in a single location for the whole movie and they get into meaningful conversations.  They talk, they build relationships and if you’re lucky there will be a climax near the end of the movie where a woman slaps a man and storms out of the room.  That’s the climax the whole movie was building towards.

Compare that to today’s Hollywood blockbuster movies like Transformers or something of that sort.  We’re talking about 289 different action sequences, 689 stunts, and 10,000 rounds of ammo going off all in the span of less than two hours.  If you blink, you’ll probably miss three action scenes.

We’re bombarded with clips and sound-bytes and text messages and headlines and 140 character Twitter posts everywhere we go.  Who has time for to read a meaningful Blog post anymore?

If you’ve gotten this far in this Blog post, you’re either a Blogger who really wants to know why Blogging is dead, or you’re in the minority as a person who has an attention span of more than 15 seconds.

Thinking?  What Thinking?

I was at McDonald’s the other day, going through drive-thru and as I picked up my food I asked the girl for straws because I didn’t see them on the drink tray where they normally put them.  She turned to me and said “They’re in the bag” so I said “Oh, ok, thanks” and proceeded to drive away.  However, since this isn’t the first time I’ve had my ordered screwed up there I stopped the car and checked the bag.  Sure enough there were no straws in the bag.

I reversed back to the window somewhat ticked.  I was going to tell the girl that there are no straws in the bag and see what kind of reaction I get from her since she basically just lied to me.  I reversed and waited until she came up to the window.  She came up to the window and told me my food will be there shortly.  Not only did she not remember me from 15 seconds prior, she thought I was the next person in line.

I realized that there was no point arguing with her, so I just asked for straws and drove off.  She probably thought I was the next person in line and left without my food.  Probably told her co-workers I was a retard.

Nobody wants to or has any time to think anymore.  Everyone wants everything handed to them on a silver platter.  If you’re writing Blog posts, trying to convey concepts and ideas, your audience is shrinking every day as less and less people have time to sit down, read your post, understand the concept or idea you’re conveying and then implement it into their lives.

Like I said…

Blogging Is Dead

It’s pretty ironic for me to be writing a Blog post that talks about Blogging being dead.  I’m writing this post knowing damn well that it will probably never get highly ranked in the search engines because some content factory Blog out there is probably pumping out 100 variations of this topic as I write this and there is no real way for the search engines to differentiate this post from a thousand others that were mass produced by a software package.

I also know that the damage these content pump Blog sites and Flogs have done to destroy the trust people had for Blogger’s opinions not too long ago, can never be undone.  I know that this article will float around the Internet, lost in a sea of abundant content.  And even if it is picked up and seen, most people will never bother reading the whole thing.  If I’m lucky some will skim through and read the highlighted bold text headings and then skip to the end to see the conclusion.

So why am I bothering to write this?  To hopefully help some poor soul that’s wondering why their Blog traffic (and income) is going nowhere and beating themselves up, thinking that perhaps the article they just slaved three h
ours over doesn’t have enough valuable content inside it.  If this is you, your Blog is going nowhere not because your ideas or your content sucks… it’s because the old model of Blogging is dead.

So what do we do now?

High Impact Blogging

When I first realized that Blogging as we know it is dead, I have to admit that I was pretty depressed.  I’ve poured so much time and effort into building this Blog and when I sat down and thoroughly analyzed my stats and realized that over 90% of my traffic was targeting just a few Blog posts I was not happy.  When I realized those Blog posts were not getting lots of traffic because they were some of my best work, but because they were easily consumable by someone with a 15 second attention span and a Digg & Stumble button at their fingertips, I wanted to cry.

Then I had an epiphany that got me so excited I couldn’t sleep.  You see, the beauty of traditional Blogging being dead is that if you evolve past traditional Blogging, your competition shrinks from 150+ Million Blogs to almost nothing.  Much the same way that Blogs obliterated traditional websites in the search engines when they first came on the scene, I believe that High Impact Blogging is going to completely obliterate traditional Blogging.

It’s already happening if you’re paying attention.

High Impact Blogging will cut through the crap produced by content factories.  The search engines will value high impact blog posts because people will value high impact blog posts.  High Impact Blogging will re-establish the trust that Flogs destroyed.  It will also eliminate content overload by delivering high-quality information that addresses the needs of it’s audience and capture their attention, leaving them glued and mesmerized like a teenage boy gawking at Megan Fox.

So what is High Impact Blogging? 

That, my friends, is something I’ll share with you in another post…

In the meantime, so as not to leave you completely hanging, go back and re-read my interview with Robb Sutton.  This time actually read the interview, don’t just skim it.  It will give you a hint as to what High Impact Blogging is.  Better yet, pickup Robb’s eBook as it’s one of the first eBooks I’ve read in years that contained original thinking and was one of the influencing factors in making me realize that High Impact Blogging is the way of the future.

Want More?

If reading this post gave you goose-bumps and spoke to you at a level much more than just idle curiosity, and you’d really like me to focus more of my energy on expanding and possibly teaching / coaching the concept of High Impact Blogging, you can let me know this by leaving a comment and signing up for my High Impact Blogging email list here: High Impact Blogging

If I get enough interest from people wanting to learn this, I may consider putting together a more formal course or coaching class instead of just covering the basics in future Blog posts.  If you really want to light a fire under my butt to create something quick, share this article with whoever you think will benefit from it as the more people that sign up for the email list, the more likely I’ll create a course of some sort.  Otherwise, if you’re just passively curious, I’ll probably dive into it in more detail in future Blog posts.

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