My reflections on 15 years of blogging

This year, I celebrate my 15th year as a blogger. That is almost as long as the amount of time I spent on my first job with a leading accounting firm, much longer than my stint with a bank, and about half the number of years I’ve been married.

I started my blogging journey back in 2005/2006 on the Multiply platform before it transformed into an e-commerce platform then shut down in 2013. I learned to improve my craft through the years by attending annual iBlog summits, organized by internet marketing specialist Janette Toral.  In the last years of iBlog, I had several opportunities to become a speaker or panelist and share my own insights with new batches of bloggers.

Blogging then was a lot simpler than it is now. We did not have social media yet in our early years so we just wrote and published. Period. It’s gotten a lot more complicated now, as you all already know.

Let me try to put down some thoughts on what changed during these 15 years.

Blogging has gone mainstream

Today’s bloggers probably will not believe that there was a time when bloggers were NOT invited to media events. Media events were meant to be published on mainstream media outlets so they were reserved solely for the press. Even when some marketing agencies began testing the waters by inviting bloggers, we were considered more “nice to have” than “must-have”. It took many years for us to gain respectability as bloggers and to be seen as an important component of campaigns by marketers.

Today, bloggers are mainstream and are part of most, if not all, brand launches and campaigns. We’ve come a long way.

New social media platforms = microblogging

Some bloggers actually have no blogs, with domain names and host providers; they post mainly on Facebook. Microblogging is here. All you really need are 1-2 short paragraphs plus an image or link and you’re good. I post a lot on Facebook and honestly, microblogging is so much easier than blogging.

So why do I still maintain 4 blogs? I guess I’m old-school. I am still of the belief that a blogger has to have an established identity of his/her own, separate from social media platforms. Long-form blogging will not go away any time soon.

Video and audio – the new social

Everything is now social and blogging alone is often not enough. Vlogging on YouTube in the early days has been given competition by more platforms offering video. Facebook Watch and Instagram Live are just some of them. Then there are apps like TikTok and Kumu that combine messaging with entertainment. Podcasts have become an audio form of blogging.

I now have so many more ways to get my ideas across and extend that reach even further through social media.

Cause Marketing – a wish come true

I used to wonder when brands would move from focusing on selling products to making it a product that had meaning and purpose. I remember speaking with one marketing executive almost a decade ago and expressed my wish that brands would make campaigns more value- and purpose-driven.

Well, it has happened. Cause marketing, a type of marketing method where brands align themselves with a specific cause or belief, is gaining ground.

More marketing agencies are now connecting their brands to family values, community assistance, Filipino traditions, and even social justice. Inclusivity and inclusion are also apparent in selecting brand ambassadors.

That marketing executive I spoke with some years ago? His marketing agency is now one of the leaders in cause marketing.

Authenticity still rules!

People read blogs of those they find authentic and real. I enjoy reading the blogs of mommies who do not try to paint a rosy picture of parenting all the time. Parenting is not like that! Believe me. I have 4 kids! I would rather read about moms who say they get tired often, lack sleep, sometimes wish they would go on vacation alone just to get a break. They resonate with me.

It was true then and it is still true now. Authenticity matters. Brands are now turning to micro (10-50k followers) and nano (1-5k followers) influencers whose posts are more likely to resonate with most of their target consumers.

It’s now ‘Content creators’!

Brands call us influencers but who isn’t? Even someone with 10 followers or less influences. I still call myself a blogger although many now refer to themselves as ‘content creators’. That’s because we now have audio and video creators, not just bloggers.

I find this an exciting trend especially since some content creators have specializations, like cooking, tech, hobbies, and so on. Many bloggers like me also have blog niches (that’s why I have 4 blogs!) but with content creators, specializations have become truly multimedia. I believe so much can still be done with content creation.

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It has been a wonderful 15-year blogging journey and I am looking forward to the next 15 years. Sometimes I wonder…how much more can blogging and content creation change from what it is now? Well, going by the last 15 years, I think there are surprises up ahead. GAME!