Social Blogging - An Analysis (I.e. Medium or Hive.blog)

This is a post I've been wanting to make for a while, and I think I made something similar a little while back. However this post is more for expressing the frustration with this format of content at this point in time.

It used to be a huge market, and most creators don't realize it is a category. They see social blogs, as the same thing as regular blogs. They're not.

There are a few key differences, such as length, frequency, and the niche may be determined partially by the virality of the platform.

What has the history been like?

This is the type of content that comes in between just regular Facebook or LinkedIn posts, even Twitter/X threads, and the long form written blog posts. Even short blog posts are generally longer.

Social blogs fit into a nice niche when it comes to your content strategy, as they can act like points of entry to your brand. I used to even write a social blog alongside any big blog post, that way it could link to the post. As they were the same topic.

Platforms come and go, but this format seems to be something with a huge amount of potential. I just wish there was a place to do them.

Here are some of the platforms you may familiar with:

Some of these you may know, and others you may not (or may not have considered them as such).

Medium.com

Probably the most popular on this list, but in my extensive experience with the platform I find it to be completely not worth your time anymore.

Their greedy monetization practices has caused every writer on there to only make "paid posts", which causes issues when it comes to short form writing. At least 60% of the posts I see are 3 or 5min reads or less, which is certainly NOT the content that should be put behind a paywall. However the platform will refuse to share your post outside of followers if it is not paid only.

Hence the problem with centralized platforms like this. ^

Steemit/Hive.blog

Taking the opposite approach, Steemit was made as a sort of medium and reddit hybrid on the blockchain. Given that it is built on decentralized technology, then you would think that it wouldn't have the same problems. Well a few years ago there was a scandal on Steemit, where someone bought out most of the shares of the chain. In which case gives them more singular control over the platform.

Folks that didn't want to deal with that, then forked the code over to Hive.blog, which I stuck around for. Not to mention I was rather happy with the tool. Sadly, over the years it hasn't changed at all. No new features, no evolution in creators, and it is almost purely blockchain/crypto content. That focus on crypto makes it unappealing to a mass audience. Meaning writing on here isn't worth it.

Vocal.media

Another site sort of like medium, but really anchored to the categories of posts. You had to pick a certain category to post, and they were super uptight about your post being anywhere besides Vocal. Sorry bloggers who like to cross post.

While not bad of a platform, it just didn't really have much to offer.

Quora Blogs

One that died out, but was a unique bridge. Want to build up your thought leadership by answering questions on quora, while also blogging about the same topics you're answering?

Well Quora doesn't like you taking people off the platform, no but like REALLY doesn't like you taking them off. So when you share links to some resource, even if it isn't your own. You can get in trouble, which is something that happened to me even. I wasn't even sharing my own links, and I got my answer taken down for one too many links (I think it was 3) to helpful resources. Which is actually what caused me to leave the platform (even though I have 700k views on there).

The quora blogs were sort of supposed to remedy this issue, but they deleted the feature after a short while.

Facebook Notes

A short lived feature on the main Facebook platform. They were essentially native blogs that spawned off of Facebook's desire to create an alternative to Google Amp pages. Which are quick loading, low fidelity, versions of blog posts so that they don't take up a lot of data to load in.

However FB quickly pulled the plug. I think I only made about 5 before the platform removed the ability to make more.

Blogger

Pretty common in the 2000's, but died out really around the 2010's. I think the site is still up, but not really relevant anymore. That is all I really have to say.

Tumblr

Same here just like Blogger, used to be a big deal, and some people grew their audience by blogging on that platform. However after the nsfw content shifted around, the platform died out. It isn't a place for bloggers anymore, and who is to say it even was?

LinkedIn Articles/Pulse

Probably the only one with potential this year, but seems to have died down. This was the lifehack that all thought leaders were raving about. However with hardly any updates to their terrible writing user interface/experience, and the lack of support from the platform sharing your posts.

There wasn't really much point to making these articles. In fact you're more likely to get engagement from actual posts than articles. Despite linkedin encouraging you to write articles.

Where does that leave us?

Well I'm making this post because I feel that there is literally no opportunity right now to make this content. Substack and other newsletter places aren't really the place either. They are more series based around a niche, whereas social blogs don't necessarily have to be.

They are probably about the same length of content, but they serve a different purpose. Thus posting these social blogs to Substack doesn't seem like the right course of action either. It isn't like the community feature on there is that strong after all, especially compared to how viral medium used to be. That being the point of these posts, to gain traction and growth.

I've thought about just focusing on the web3 platforms, such as Hive.blog or Mirror, etc. However again they are just really crypto bros, and so regular content won't perform there. If you have any ideas, then please do tell me.