My Blogging Strategy in Times of Dead Blogging

27 Jan 2025 #writing

Blogging is dead. At least, that’s what almost everybody claims.

And it’s been dead for years. But in spite of that belief, we still find (random and famous) people writing on their blogs: Seth Godin, Herbert Lui, and me (shameless plug).

With blogs, we have control but lose distribution

In our blogs, we aren’t at the mercy of third-party platforms and their algorithms.

A blog is a place you own. You can redesign it and write anything you want. It’s like your small kingdom. And I like to think of my blog as my time capsule.

But blogs don’t have a distribution mechanism.

Apart from search engines and cross-posting, there’s no “feed” for blogs. Well, there’s RSS, but you still have to find a blog in the first place to add it to your RSS reader.

Distribution is where social media truly shines. Unlike blogs, social media shine at putting content in front of readers. This means we can see traction way faster on social media compared to a blog sitting behind search engines.

But we don’t control our social media accounts.

A social media platform can change its rules at any time. Just take a look at Medium, everybody is complaining about getting lower payouts after a change in the algorithm.

Getting banned on social media is possible if you don’t behave.

We need a combination of both: social media for short-form content and blogs (and newsletters) for long-form content

Since 2024, I started to use my blog as my main hub for my content.

Ultimately, all my content ends up here on my blog in some shape or form. A single blog post ends up in multiple shorter posts for social media. And a short social media post can evolve into larger posts or sections. That’s my content wheel.

And I’m not only writing SEO-optimized 1,000-word posts about programming anymore.

Apart from coding and software engineering, I’m writing about my other interests. We’re not single-interest creatures. I’m not. I’m a multipotentialite. In fact, I created a new tag as a catch-all for my “other” content.

My new rule is that if an idea is larger than a Tweet, it can be a post.

When I cross-post on other platforms, I invite readers to my newsletter. And on every email I send, I promote two posts I write here and the products I’m building.

But if I had to start all over again today, I wouldn’t start with a blog. I’d go with a social media account and a newsletter.