Last week I was talking to a crowd of people about social media and told them that I wouldn't be without my blog because I thought my blog was essential as my home...my base...from where I went to places such as Twitter, Flickr and so on. But having sung the praises of blogging, I have been wondering if it is as relevant...popular....necessary...now we have Twitter and Facebook?Do people subscribe to blogs anymore?
I have a number of people who follow or subscribe to my blog. I can check this out by using various analytic tools. What I have noticed is that the number of followers has stayed static for about a year. And yet the number of people who look at pages of my blog has increased. So clearly people are visiting my blog but not necessarily subscribing to it.
Where does Twitter sit in all this?
I only have to look at my own use of social media to get a sense of how people are behaving toward blogs. I don't subscribe to blogs any more either. I have a Google Reader account but very rarely use it to read blogs. What I do these days is read blog posts that people recommend on Twitter. This is a random approach to keeping up to date but I find works very well for my own particular learning needs.
Blogging is as relevant as it always has been
As I said last week, I don't think blogging will go out of fashion for the time being. I will continue to blog for my own learning and development needs, if nothing else. Here is where I process my thoughts and have deeper conversations with people than I can have on Twitter or Facebook.
But I do think that we need to pay less attention to the number of people who subscribe to our blogs and more to the number of pages accessed because that is a truer reflection of how 'popular' our blogs are.
What do you think? Do you read particular blogs regularly? Do you follow or subscribe to blogs? If you are a blogger, what have you noticed about your blog stats over the last six months to a year?
4 comments:
What impact do you think g+ will have?
Hi Sarah, I think you are correct in saying that people pop in and out of looking at your blog.... I have people dropping by but don't subscribe.. I still think that blogging is popular... I know I look at many but don't always comment. I only choose a few to comment on as I am too busy to always stop and write..
I've pondered some of the issues you talk about here. I think it's important to remember that not all people are that 'blog savvy' or even social media savvy. So even signing to to an ezine is still a totally normal, or perhaps even novel, act for some. Yes social media is huge right now, but the blog is the heart of my web empire.
Thanks for dropping by, ladies.
@Anne Marie Have no idea about g+. I've had no time at all to even look at it, let alone play. I think it is only geeks playing with it at the moment - it will be a while before it becomes main stream. What do you think?
@infomidwife I think there still is room for blogs, especially in midwifery. There are so few decent blogs that give out great information to midwives and students, so think it will be a while before they are replaced.
@Charlotte I agree...the average person I talk to doesn't know what a blog is, and certainly doesn't know how to subscribe. So I guess it's important for us bloggers to make it as easy as possible for readers to follow our blog posts.
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