WHY WRITING FOR THE BLOG WILL ALWAYS BE MY CREATIVE PRIORITY
I originally wrote this back in 2019 when the creative community was starting to get more than a little disenchanted with Instagram. What follows is a rewrite from a January 2023 perspective - with a tongue-in-cheek look back at my social media experiences and the reasons why the blog will always be my anchor in the sometimes-choppy sea of content creation…
Midway through 2019 I happened across multiple posts and conversation threads about why people were returning to the art of writing and reading blogs again. It was a sentiment I heartily applauded as, no matter how often I took a break from, yet inevitably returned to Instagram, blogging has always been my first love. It’s now January 2023 and having just brought a design upgrade for Simply Start Living to fruition, I realise I stand firmly behind my belief in long form content as the mainstay. Although in a fast-paced world of erratic consumption, it can sometimes feel like I’m whispering my allegiance into an empty room. Nonetheless, I remain steadfast in my loyalty.
Why? Because blog content feels slower, calmer and demands more from the consumer than a glance or a hasty double-tap - it requires effort, both to consume and to create. Call me old fashioned but I'd rather read one meaningful blog post than scroll through a hundred videos of people dancing and pointing to captions in an effort to get on the good side of Zuckerberg’s almighty algorithms.
That said, I maintain that Instagram will always have a place in my creative domain but only at the points when I can actively stomach it. Or genuinely feel I’m enjoying the process of creating and editing images and Reels… and not depending on it to “perform”. I’ve learnt not to invest too much effort into it these days, having lost count of the times I wrote meaningful words to resonate with my audience – only to find they never even made it in front of one percent of the eyeballs they were intended for. With a blog, not only does your content get to have a permanent home – a home that you’re in control of – but you know that your audience will come back and find it if they’re invested enough. Possibly because they haven’t been distracted by all the dancing and pointing.
Towards the end of my time as an official influencer – a time I define as having enough offers to sieve through and pick suitable partnerships to facilitate an income – I began noticing that more and more brands were becoming Instagram-centric and had little to no interest in what you could offer as blog content. A fact I felt repeatedly disappointed about as I found it easier to craft the story, create a mood and provide a stable home for collaborative ideas. To me Instagram was the add-on – the teaser to send you over to the website or blog where you could sink your teeth into more detail. Apparently, no one had the time to sink their teeth into anything anymore in the world of Scroll, Click, Move On.
I persevered (to a degree) with sponsored work on Instagram alone and for a couple of years it sufficed. On reflection, my heart wasn’t in it enough to persuade me to swim with the tide – perhaps my refusal to get on board with what the bigger fish were doing compounded my ultimate decline in engagement for AD based content. This was of course quickly followed by the slow and painful cessation of brand offers. So be it - time to move on – it’s all about perspective. Ironically, the subsequent life events of my mum passing away, falling headfirst into perimenopause and living through a pandemic helped with that perspective. A lot.
Sometimes I wonder if brands will come full circle and begin to choose permanent over instant once more? Perhaps it’s dependant on the influencer and where their following is strongest. I'm willing to bet a considerable sum that my blog readers are way more invested than a lot of my Instagram audience. And the reverse will most likely be true for twenty and thirty somethings who will have high engagement on Instagram or *shudders* TikTok. Why would you go to the trouble of setting up and maintain a blog when it’s all right there in the palm of your hand?
Speaking of things that go full-circle - as someone who started with a blog, took a tumble into the Scroll, Click, Move On scrum and ended up sticking with creating here, this is a not so brief synopsis of my social media experience…
Hot on the heels of establishing the first blog, I finally caved in and tried Twitter… I remember being adamant that No... I refuse to do the Twitter thing. Why try and squeeze what I want to say into 140 characters when I can rattle on for 1,400 words plus on the blog? When I eventually succumbed, I did end up loving it for the longest time. It helped to grow a decent blog audience, I made IRL friends from online conversations and it even brought a little mainstream press coverage my way over the years. At some point (I can't pinpoint when exactly), I noticed it became a lot more shouty… more aggressive. Later, Twitter kindly provided us with more characters to use so that we could shout at each other more coherently… and look what a shit show it's all turned out to be now. App deleted.
Facebook, they said. If you write a blog, you must have a Facebook page. "But I don't like Facebook" I wailed. But I did as I was told and created one. To which I did little more than publish blog post links and hook it up to receive auto posts form my Instagram feed for a time. Again… along came Zuckerberg and his algorithms, all the shouty people and the lunacy of media fuelled, opinion shepherding, meaning that eventually, it was a hard No from me. App deleted.
Next up was the shining star of Instagram… and I fell for that one hook, line and sinker. At first I posted images with scarily bad angles and weird filters, wondering how on earth others’ feeds always looked so darn good. Eventually I learnt what a flat lay was, why coffee was so popular and why peonies can quickly become a cliche. I soon worked out that I was a neutrals girl and got geeky about editing, curation and every shade of greige known to man. I scratched my head, came up with schedules, tried out various strategies and stressed about algorithms, numbers and growth. The years went by, Zuckerberg shat all over it again – seriously Dude! – and I woke up to the stark reality that only the short-sighted chickens put all their eggs in that basket. App occasionally deleted.
And let’s not forget Pinterest… but here I feel I should first give a shout out to my old mate Tumblr – the original image curation outlet before Pinterest was invented. Tumblr served no purpose for me other than to cultivate a desire to live life in black, white and muted neutrals - be a size eight (Ha!), possess beachy waves and own an edgy-as-fuck wardrobe. I don’t know what happened to Tumblr. Do you?
Back to Pinterest. Virtual mood boarding you say? Gimme! At first, rapidly and somewhat randomly, I created all manner of boards and pinned happily for hours. Hours which, in hindsight, would have probably been better spent producing blog content. Then came a plethora of articles about the powers of having a Pinterest strategy. Hmmm... that word again. I pounced on stories of how a viral pin could drive traffic to blogs on a continual basis - slow and steady me could do with a bit of viral.
Create boards that represent your brand they said. Fill them with ideas and inspirations that in all likelihood, you’ll never get around to because you're too busy pinning. Use keywords they suggested. Wait... now you can schedule your pins to appear at the optimum time for more eyes-on. You'll have to pay for this though. Create rich pins. Pins that are the optimum shape and size for being noticed and re-pinned. Pins with graphics. Pin your Instagram images… ARGH! Ever found yourself pinning so much that you don't have time to pee anymore?
I tried it all and after faithfully scheduling pins for a year, I hopefully checked in with my Google Analytics. Nada. Zilch. No viral traffic for me. Maybe I was doing it wrong but... having lost the will to live (and the time to pee), I stopped pinning with a plan and went back to pinning for pleasure instead. App remains and here are my boards for your perusal. Just be sure to pee first.
So… blogging - I’m here to stay. Judged by the value and resonation of its content rather than follower numbers, supported by loyal readers who’ve stayed along for the ride since 2008 - it can be whatever I want it to be – evolving any number of times and controlled solely by me. Despite the gut-wrenchingly fast-paced times we live in, blogging is still relatively new in the grand scheme of things and for me it still retains its shine and attraction.
There’s nothing quite like the feeling of sitting down to write a blog post when a sudden rush of words overtakes the urge to do anything else. Fingers fly across the keyboard; jumbled thoughts get much needed airtime and sentiments shared with like-minded readers. Sometimes you start off on one path and by the time the post is complete, it’s morphed into something else altogether. It's creative freedom and it's mine. And like all good things with a serendipitous quality to them, I happened upon it quite by chance. Without a smidgen of strategy in sight…
