Anniversary

At the 24th of February is my first blogging anniversary.

How fast a year goes by.

A good time to reflect my blogging experience.

One year ago I started this blog as a project. At this time I did not know if someone would read it, if it would be somehow successful, nor where it would lead.

Today I can look backward and say that I'm surprised about the success (measured in number of page views and contributions).

That's more than I've expected. People from all over the world had a look at my side.

Some of them are faithful readers and commenters. And some of them helped me to find inspirations or answers to my questions.

For me, the question today is how I want to proceed with the blog?

It was good for me. Read why.

I've sharpened the skill to structure my work before I'm doing something. I think that protected me from just nailing something together.

I've learned a lot about blogging and Blogger. That was helpful for my day job. Blogging is an important marketing instrument these days. All the experiences I made I could use for the marketing of my business projects.

It was good for my soul! I had some hard winters behind me with some strange health problems. The Blog gave me another goal to work for. And I believe that this helped (no issues so far this winter).

And finally I met some nice persons from everywhere, albeit online.

And on the down side?

Of course, it means effort. Writing down what you have done during the week, shooting & editing pictures, pre-producing for the times you are not available and lastly no idea what to write about.

The question if the people like what I'm writing concerns me. Or even not. But I'm curious about their opinions. That requires a good feedback system.
Finally the question if blogging is up-to-date?

All these thoughts and questions steered me into some research work and finally brought up some new aspects.

The Blogging Future in 2016

Blogging will to continue to evolve its role as an important content creation, publication and distribution strategies for individuals online.

There are impacting trends for bloggers and blogging in general. Here is what I found trendy.

Size Matters

It has been found that the average length of a post in 2015 was 900 words (result of a survey).

In an over-saturated content world it becomes more important to produce content with depth. And not drowning in superficiality.

So my decision is to stay with blogging to provide content for my curious visitors.

The End of Comments

I think we will see the end of comments on blog posts as we have known them for the last years. Why?

In simple terms, creators do not want to spend their time in managing comments. On the other side, comments are not where readers want to have their conversations.

Comments on blogs require active moderation on the part of the blogger. For readers, there is a big disadvantage in commenting blogs. There will be another login  for example and the conversation is limited to this site.

I believe that the conversation will move to the social sphere. That said, cite the URL and share it on Twitter.

New Graphics

I think we have to stop thinking about blogging as a text-based communications medium.

My strong believe is, that we will see bloggers and influencers use text less and graphical elements more in the near future.

Why do I think this?

I see the growing use of graphics in other places every day. In consulting business we had slideshows with uncountable number of pages in the past. Nowadays we will find the same content in one sketch note on the board or poster in the office.

Images will become a more central feature of the blog posts, with the trend towards image-blogging expanding.

I'm still struggling with this. Should I switch to Instagram or tumblr?

Conclusion

All in all I still believe that blogging is a good and useful way of exchanging information and experiences. It provides an excellent platform for good content without being too fast moving.

Nevertheless I would like to find some additions which will make my blog more attractive and fitting better into the new world of social media.

That's easier said than done. I don't like Facebook, Google+ is near to insignificance, Instagram is a Facebook company, only a few woodworkers are really active on Twitter, and so on.

I will think about all this for a while. But one thing is clear to me now. I will stay with my blog, at least for one more year (project managers always think in time blocks).

Now then, thanks for your time and patience this time. It is a more let's say philosophic view of things.

As always I'm interested in your opinion. Have I bored you to death? Or do you have similar thoughts?

If you liked what you read, then feel free to share it.

Some thoughts about #woodworking blogging from @Steff_66

Stay tuned!
Next week I will be back with woodworking.

Stefan