I was thinking about something tonight (Sunday). I was talking to Rob Cairns, who is putting out an email about podcasting to his list Monday.
Recently the Canadian Raptor himself went over 100 podcast episodes. Congrats Rob!
He prefers podcasting to writing.
A couple of things have happened to make all these changes.
Linkbait posts are highly competitive.
First of all, the rant based blog posts don’t have the kind of effect they may have had previously, especially when it comes to SEO value.
Writing has to be stellar these days. That includes plenty of words, a thorough covering of the topic, lots of external links (think footnotes), and has to be original.
So many things go into making a blog post stellar these days.
I have been working on a blog post about what stellar blog content is. In the meantime, you can see what I mean here, here, and here.
Joshua Hardwick has a great article about linkbait blog posts. He gives some reasons people share and what makes an article linkbait worthy.
Linkbait is totally different than clickbait. Linkbait, as Hardwick says, is, “…content that’s specifically formulated to attract links. It’s something so cool, valuable and unique that (given the opportunity) any industry blogger/influencer would be hard-pressed not to link to it.”
Because successful “linkbait” usually appeals to one or more of these principles, you’ll find that at a bare minimum, “linkbait” will be an insanely detailed guide with custom illustrations/imagery, beautiful formatting, and a unique angle (like the example above).
Joshua Hardwick, Ahrefs
So, we used to make lots of topics just expounding on our experience and knowledge and we wrote it down.
That happened a lot 5-10 years ago.
I still believe in these types of posts. We still need to get what we think out on paper.
What I think will happen more in the future is experts will do this in a podcast.
Podcasts are easier to create.
Podcasts are much easier to do these days. All you need a microphone and a computer, somewhere to host your audio, and off you go.
That being said, if you want a little training, you can check out Joe Casabona’s course for podcasting. It is by a long time podcaster and teacher and not expensive at all.
Podcast Liftoff [affiliate link]
What about blog posts?
See, here is where it gets interesting.
It is an arms race versus a race to the bottom of the barrel. People are working to outdo their competitors (that’s what linkbait articles do).
I think blog posts, long-form SEO value blog posts, are going to look more like long-form guides or ebooks. That is the only way you will compete. By the way, you can’t get that kind of work for a few dollars.
Companies will produce these stellar guides that covers a topic very thoroughly.
The guides can be repurposed as ebooks. They are long. Some will clock in at several thousand words, the same size as a small ebook.
From these guides (blog posts), they can then be repurposed and remixed as social media content and emails for their list.
These types of content will take the work of several blogs over several months.
Companies will then fill in the gaps with shorter pieces of content that can also be a podcast or a video.
Now to be fair, there are several types of content you need to produce, not just topic guides.
Podcasting can be more efficient to do and sometimes more fun.
Most business owners don’t have the time. The ones who love to write will make the time.
I am not saying blog posts will go away, I just think you will see them become different mediums.
Wrapping it up
Do you have a podcast? Do you write regular blog posts?
How do you get your thoughts out and share your expertise?
