The Small-Town Feel of Old School Blogging
Does anyone else miss that loving feeling?
I remember a time when anyone could be the cool kid on the block if they had a novel idea and wanted to write about it. It was a new dawn, the new age of blogging, and many of us started waaaay back when there was still space to breathe on the internet.
It was far back enough that social media wasn’t wasn’t curb-stomping you the minute you opened your eyes in the morning, the way it does now.
In those days blogging was beautifully organic because you had to work to attract an audience and an audience had to intentionally seek you out. Old-school blogging was so satisfying because you knew that when someone wanted to know about your topic they searched for it, found it, and appreciated it.
More importantly, you knew they appreciated it because they showed their appreciation by posting comments on your blog.
Blog commenting was a way for a worldwide audience to relate to your topic, contribute their own knowledge, and simply say thank you for sharing.
In the beginning, blog posts weren’t just lone rangers roaming through the night. They were legit pieces of online real estate that remained static in the same place you originally put them.
This is me blogging my heart out in a public park in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. (2009) Long before the days when everyone wanted to be an influencer.
Then, Facebook was born.
It was like the birth of a new nation.
Facebook became a means to attract traffic and build a community around your blog, but it also allowed readers to divert from the original purpose of the blog. That purpose was to be a standalone, collective place to share valuable information that readers were looking for.
Blogs had a small-town feel.
Residents of the small town came out into the streets every day to find out what new things were happening in their community. They made a point of coming out every day because they were hungry for knowledge, and the town of your blog was the place to fill the information gap.
Then, the city of Facebook was built nearby and everyone packed their bags and moved.
Of course, the city of Facebook supported the town of your blog but the information became misplaced. The big city offered a more efficient way for residents and visitors to put in their two cents, but their two cents no longer helped build up the small town anymore.
Tourists began passing through town on their way to the city.
Call me old school, but I LOVED the days when readers commented on my blog. Sure, I still had a Facebook community page with thousands of followers but it just wasn’t the same.
Social media allowed readers to become lazy.
When you post links on social media, instead of commenting on the blog, people typically comment on the social post. The problem with social posts is the information disappears into the abyss of a constantly moving timeline feed.
Blog posts quickly lost their value as a piece of real estate. They became cheap rentals for transients, sort of like an Airbnb you rent for one night on a road trip.
In essence, the blog was no longer the hub.
It’s not that bloggers don’t appreciate social media comments but it no longer contributes to the building of the blog itself. Readers have become more interested in the fast-paced nature of the city, not the town-building process.
Nowadays, readers see a social post, click through to read the blog, then come right back to the social link to share their comments.
While this is great for traffic and analytics, it’s not great for the local community vibe we became so accustomed to in the old days.
With my old travel blog, I wasn’t as interested in my massive Facebook page with thousands of followers as I was in having a blog full of information that didn’t get lost by the next week.
It was the town of the blog that meant something to me, not the city of passive followers.
Then came Substack.
When I first met Substack in 2017 it served one purpose — a place to write a paid newsletter in conjunction with my blog. That’s all I wanted it for back then and it worked right up until the day I retired both.
Six years later, I returned and learned that it has become a brilliant solution for anyone who is utterly exhausted with the social media circus. Lord knows the last thing I’m interested in is MORE ways to waste time.
On Substack, there’s no waste. It’s like a reusable shopping bag that keeps on filling itself up with content and value.
You write a post, and it automatically becomes a newsletter and your blog post at the same time. It also becomes the hub — that small town I raved about above. It’s the place where people leave comments, share within the community (and beyond), and turn your piece of writing into the piece of real estate it was meant to be.
**Fly little blog post…spread your wings and fly!!**
It has been an instant hallelujah for people like me who would rather manually pluck out my toenails than start another Facebook fan page or TwitteX account.
Substack fills all the gaps. You can “tweet” yourself to death on the integrated Notes platform. You can share and recommend the shit out of yourself and your fellow writers, and the most important thing? You can REST ASSURED that what you write and publish today reaches your subscribers TODAY…an area where Medium (for example) falls 800 football fields short.
Anyhoo…I’m not trying to convince anyone to quit blogging or quit writing on Medium. I’m pro-writing period, wherever it happens to be, because writing is so very necessary.
**steps off soapbox**
I would LOVE to hear your feelings about writing platforms, especially if you used to be an old-school blogger. Where are you writing now?
