How AI, AR/VR, Interactive Content and More Are Changing Blogging
Would you like to know what the future of blogging will look like? You probably remember back in the early days of the internet when it looked like sharing your thoughts and experiences in the style of a personal diary. Many years have passed since then, and today blogging is used as a powerful marketing tool to help brands increase their online presence and find new customers. According to Web Trubunal, there are 600+ million blogs in the world today. Experts from Social Media Today state that about 80% of internet users still read blogs. Moreover, about 80% of bloggers provide effective marketing results for brands partnering with them.
So, blogging is still a relevant field providing many powerful tools for marketers. Today, we can see how technological advances are having a significant impact on the world of blogs. We can already see how artificial intelligence is impacting content marketing as well as many other trends such as the rise of video content and microblogging. In this article, we will focus on what trends are shaping the future of blogging and what that future will look like.
Video Blogging Continues Gaining Momentum
Also known as vlogging, video blogging is one of the fastest-growing trends in the world of blogs. Popular platforms like TikTok and YouTube are helping creative people communicate in one of the most popular ways with their audience and build up their follower base. There are several reasons why people today favour video content over regular articles:
- Video is an engaging and interactive medium that allows you to share your views on various things in a convenient format. No written article can convey what a blogger shows in their video.
- A new level of authenticity as well as the immediacy of content delivery. With the support of online streaming technology, today’s video hosting sites allow bloggers to share content directly from the heart of the action in real-time.
- Equipment for filming and editing vlogs is becoming more and more advanced and affordable. To become a vlogger, all you need is a modern iPhone or a flagship Android smartphone and a software solution like Final Cut or DaVinci Resolve. As for TikTok, having just a smartphone with a good camera is enough to succeed on this platform.
So, you don’t need to be a professional cameraman and director today to become a successful video blogger. However, the growth of video blogging does not mean that word articles will wane in the future. Marketers see video content as a powerful tool to complement written articles. By placing quality and relevant videos on your blog pages, you can attract a more diverse audience and thus increase the popularity of your blog. Utilizing an AI video creator like Pollo AI, you can produce captivating videos for your blogs, capturing the attention of potential viewers.
Remember that as your blog grows, it may become a full-fledged business that may require infrastructure upgrades and rebranding to grow. For this rise, it’s crucial that your domain name reflects your brand personality. If your current domain no longer fits your vision or audience, then take the time and expense to perform a domain transfer to a provider with better features, branding capabilities and security.
The Rise of Artificial Intelligence and Its Impact on Blogging
Whether you love AI or think it has come into our world to take away your job, it will have a significant impact on blogging in the near future. Already today, there are many advanced online content generators capable of producing ideas and comprehensive articles literally with a few clicks of the mouse. Given the speed of development of Chat GPT and similar language models, bloggers have AI-based tools such as Stealthly AI capable of generating content comparable to that created by the best human writers.
However, AI can still make mistakes, so fact-checking will always be necessary. In addition, only humans are still capable of writing truly engaging and compelling articles today, and this is unlikely to change soon. Therefore, the best bloggers will still only consider AI as an assistant and tool rather than a complete replacement for a human writer. Here are some tips for successfully using AI-based content generators that will be helpful to you today:
- Use AI to create initial drafts only. Even if you ask the AI to use a specific writing style, the generated content may limp in terms of style and how thoughts are presented. So, carefully check the generated content and edit it yourself until it reaches a state of perfection (or so). That way you’ll save time and ensure proper quality.
- Utilise AI to generate meta tags, headings and subheadings relevant to your niche. However, don’t forget to check them before publishing content to make sure everything is correct and in line with SEO practices.
- Test the AI’s translation skills to expand your audience with texts translated into other languages.
- Ask the AI to generate content ideas and make content article plans. However, keep in mind that sometimes the creative abilities of AI-based services are lacking in terms of quality.
Besides, you can use AI for many other tasks including generating ideas for your blog name. However, nothing beats specialised services designed specifically for generating domain names. You can create and check the availability of domain names at Namecheap, probably the best online service of its kind. Keep in mind that any good blog starts with a great domain name.
AI is creeping into our daily lives at an incredible pace, and it’s here for the long haul. However, human-centred content creation now plays an even more important role in the blogging world. So, use AI only as a tool, not a means of doing all the blogging work for you.
Quality Content Becomes More Important
While some bloggers will generate tonnes of content with AI, others will focus on creating high-quality and valuable content that can engage readers and solve their problems. Keep in mind that mediocre content will no longer work for you to build a large audience of loyal users. Here are a few tips to help you stand out from the crowd even in a time of AI-generated content dominance:
- Focus on writing in-depth posts with long-term value (aka evergreen content). Do thorough research on what you are writing about and try to be an expert to build trust.
- Don’t write overly promotional content as direct advertising is annoying to modern internet users. Instead, focus on important things like usefulness and education purposes.
- Learn about your audience’s pain points and create content that can solve their problems.
- Add interesting or funny images, infographics, quotes and videos to dilute your text content with something really engaging and exciting.
- Use a variety of platforms to promote your content including social media and an email channel.
There’s nothing easier than creating bad content – AI services to your favours. But creating really good content that conveys value is a challenge. By learning how to create high-quality, relevant and useful content, you’ll be able to run a promising blog that will stand the test of time.
Interactive Content Will Be in High Demand
Passively consuming information on your website or blog is no longer exciting for your followers. They need something entertaining and interactive such as quizzes, polls, augmented reality videos and even mini-games. By adding such interactive elements to your blog pages, you can increase engagement and interaction, thereby helping to build a stronger relationship with your subscribers.
If you want to stay competitive in the blogging world, you should add the following elements to your content:
- Quizzes. This is a fun way to make your content more appealing to your follower base. Conduct quizzes both to test knowledge and just to entertain your users.
- Polls and surveys. If you want to get feedback from your followers about a product or topic, then conduct surveys by rewarding your audience with something for their participation.
- Chatbots. Reading the FAQ section can be quite a tedious task. Instead, add a chatbot so your visitors can find answers to their questions more engagingly and interactively.
- Interactive videos. Add live elements to your videos so that users can interact with them and get different results depending on the choices they make.
These are just a few examples of how to use interactive elements in blogging. By using them skillfully, you can not only boost readership and increase the engagement of your users but also improve your brand awareness plus enhance SEO to make you more visible online.
Conversational Content and NLM
To strengthen your search engine rankings, you still have to invest a lot of time and money in SEO. However, the proliferation of AI is a major game changer. You’ve probably already used Bing or Google tools allowing you to make search queries in a more natural, human way.
There is no doubt that SEO will rapidly adapt to NLM (Natural Language Models) which is already becoming the new norm. So, when optimising your content for your blog, you will have to take into account the way users search for it. While keyword phrases will remain relevant, you will have to allocate more resources to writing natural language voice dialogue texts to stay competitive in the world of blogging.
AR/VR in Blogging
Have you tested the new virtual reality devices from Meta or Apple yet? These VR helmets open up a host of possibilities for bloggers looking to create even more engaging and immersive content. From realistic gaming to attending virtual events, AR/VR technologies provide a fully immersive experience changing how content can be consumed.
So, what makes AR/VR technologies special is that you can offer your followers a whole new experience of interacting with content. If you’re a travel blogger or a healthy eating expert, consider immersive blogging to stand out. These new technologies can also greatly enhance storytelling by allowing your followers to become part of the story you’re sharing.
Naturally, AR/VR is no longer something groundbreaking. However, the relatively high cost of virtual reality helmets has long been a barrier to mass adoption of the technology. Today, with many devices available on the market in different price categories, it’s a good time to switch to immersive content to secure your big future in the blogging world.
Microblogging
The last but by no means the least trend in blogging is the development of microblogging. Recently, microblogs have enjoyed a high popularity because they are easier to read. Proposing posts of 100-300 words in length on average, they are much shorter than standard blog articles thus saving readers time.
Microblogging is a useful format when you need to share instant updates. With a microblog, you can post news and simply talk about new ideas that have popped into your head. However, when it comes to more in-depth explanations and detailed guides, you can’t do without the more familiar standard blog. Although some believe that microblogging is the future, with the lack of information and depth typical of regular blog posts, it doesn’t stand a chance of completely changing the field of blogging.
Closing Thoughts
While the essence of blogging of sharing stories and ideas on the internet is not changing, it continues to evolve at a fairly rapid pace. While one trend replaces another, you should focus on the things that make you unique in your own right and able to convey real value to your audience. In an era where AI is taking over the world exponentially, you need to remain flexible to adapt to the changing environment. If you’re willing to keep working hard to provide truly useful information to your followers, then your future as a blogger looks bright and promising.
