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What’s The Future Of Blogging Platforms?

The Future of Blogging Platforms is WordPress… probably.

Blogging has come a long way in the past couple decades. In the 90s, blogs were little more than online diaries that you could share with your friends. The term blog, originally weblog (Web Log), wasn’t even coined until 1997-1999. Skip ahead to 2017 and blogs are an essential digital marketing tool.

When it comes to the future of blogging platforms, it seems clear that WordPress will remain the top-dog while the other platforms pick up whatever scraps are left. However, there was a time when people were certain that MySpace would be the social media king eternally. – and look how well that went.

Today, we have some fascinating CMS startups. There are some traditional products that are offering a novel or user friendly approach, and then there’s a fascinating company called Shift. Shift is a decentralized web hosting platform built on their own blockchain. With Shift, websites cannot be censored by third parties.

In April of 2018 Shift released Hydra, their content management system. Hydra will compete with WordPress to be the dominant content management system, running on an immutable blockchain to provide freedom of information to anyone with access to the internet.

In the hopes of gaining a broader perspective on the subject, we asked a group of industry experts…

What’s The Future Of Blogging Platforms?

The answer — probably, but not definitely, WordPress…  

Joost de Valk, CEO & Founder of Yoast

Joost de Valk Yoast
“In my opinion, most blogging platforms will slowly move to become website platforms, as the difference between the two is fading. You can see this with WordPress, the biggest blogging platform, which now powers more than 25% of all websites on the internet. This includes, through plugins like WooCommerce, many many webshops. The advantage blogging platforms have over other content management systems is that they’ve historically always focused more on a user friendly publishing experience.

As more and more people need to maintain websites, the user experience is becoming more important. Other CMS’s are often better, historically, at managing large volumes of content. As publishing on the web is becoming almost as common as writing a Word document, the experience of an individual editor is becoming the more important deciding factor in choosing a platform.”

 

Sally Kane, Director of Content for PaperStreet


“The growing demand for fresh, high-quality content that is distributed quickly and cheaply will fuel the growth of user-generated content, new content types and new distribution platforms. Blogging platforms will evolve to better showcase the best content and distribute it in near real-time. This is already beginning to happen with publishing platforms like Medium in which anyone can publish content and the most popular content rises to the top.

As Google algorithms increasingly penalize intrusive ads, new ways to monetize blogging platforms will also emerge. Blogging platforms of the future will incorporate artificial intelligence and content bots to generate, curate, monitor and distribute posts. Vlogging (video blogging) and virtual reality will become more mainstream components of blog content.”

 

Chris Hornak , Owner & CEO of Blog Hands


“When the first blogging platforms, like Blogger and Live Journal, were introduced it still felt to most that there was a technical barrier to entry to blogging. Blogging then became more accessible via microblogging platforms like Twitter and FriendFeed (later bought by Facebook). Now, most internet users do some form of blogging, even if they aren’t aware of it, whether it’s Facebook updates, Snap C Stories, or Youtube Vlogging.

In My opinion, medium.com (developed by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams) is the best blog platform of current times. It provides a simple yet powerful platform for anyone to start a blog of their own.

So what’s the future of blog platforms? I think it will continue to take on new forms via new social networks and multimedia platforms. There will be a continued trend of ease of use and low barriers to entry. The winning platforms will be those that give average users access to high production value content.”

 

Teresa Walsh, Marketing Executive at Cazana.com


“Old school methods of writing a post, leaving it a day or two, editing, re-editing and publishing, sharing on social media and waiting for comments will fade out. Instead here comes live posting in real time. As you type your post, it will be visible for viewers and can be integrated with social media posts.

We are already seeing an increase in the popularity of live elements thanks to Facebook live videos and Instagram live videos. Blogging will go a similar route.”

 

James Nuttall, Content Specialist for Anglo Liners


“Bloggers are getting younger and more tech-savvy; many of them either buy their domain or create their own website from scratch. IT is being taught in schools all over the world as a core subject, and as the generations learn more about coding and SEO, the need for blogging platforms to kick start a professional blogger’s career could be seriously diminished.

That being said, business websites will always have a need for these platforms. Sites like WordPress are user-friendly and reliable hosts of professional blogs, allowing you to customise the appearance and function to suit your brand style. Using these platforms is a great time-saver when you first establish a website, and if the formula works, why tamper with it?”

 

Amy Kilvington , Founder & Digital Content Specialist at Naturally Content


“Future blogging platforms will demonstrate a seamless integration of the likes of Adsense and RewardStyle, allowing bloggers to monetize their content more efficiently. The incorporation of eCommerce elements will also be prevalent, as more and more influencers launch merchandise and host their very own ‘Shop’ within their blog.”

 

About the author

Nick Hastreiter

I write about the future of business. I approach this by interviewing founders, CEO's, and other game changers to share their vision for the future of their industry.

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