The future of blogging: 5 predictions and what I’m doing to stay relevant
This is what I think it takes to succeed in blogging these days (I’m writing this at the start of 2025).
These predictions are based on what I already see in my own blogging business, and how that contrasts with a lot of advice I see thrown around in the wider blogging world.
I could be completely wrong, of course, but even if I am, I think that following any of these strategies will ultimately help you build a better blog.
In the end, it comes down to better serving your audience. Standing out in search is getting harder, so you better nail that search intent. Creators are getting ever more skilled, so you should upgrade your photography as well as your writing.
And on it goes.
Niche specialisations
You’re probably sick of hearing that you need to ‘niche down,’ but I think it’s advice worth repeating.
If you have a travel blog, I would recommend really drilling down into what makes you special.
For example, I write exclusively about travel in New Zealand. I have travelled extensively all over the world — in 2024 I visited 13 countries.
But, I still only cover New Zealand.
I’m a New Zealand born travel writer and I know the country inside out. I can give recommendations from almost every region, so I do consider myself an expert. Readers recognise that too.
I did try publishing some content from my wider sphere of experience, including solo female travel around the world, and life as a digital nomad, but those topics never caught on so I eventually stepped away from them.
My blogging strategy on my main blog is now to focus strongly on New Zealand and become the go to person for everything related to travelling in my country.
Other travel blogs I admire also zoom right in on one destination. Like the Lofoten Islands, or upstate New York, for example. So, if you’re thinking about starting a blog, I recommend finding the one focused topic you’re an expert in and going all in on that.
People want to follow people, not brands
In some ways, I think blogging should be getting easier, not harder. By that I mean that blogging is going full circle in some ways, and people now want to read more personal, first hand experiences online.
The mass proliferation of fluff content on the internet means first-hand experience (or EEAT in Google’s eyes) is now very valuable. THAT is what you have to offer your readers.
Instead of trying to regurgitate an a mash up of what’s on the top 10 pages in the search results and waiting for it to rank (which is what I used to do when I worked in a content marketing agency in 2017), now you can write directly from your own experience.
You can also do things like do away with blog names, and just write under your own name (as I do).
People are subscribing more to individual journalists on Substack, instead of legacy media outlets.
Ted Goia is a cultural and music critic who has covered this shift extensively in his successful Substack newsletter, The Honest Broker. I highly recommend subscribing to Ted to stay across these macro cultural shifts.
“Media empires are getting defeated, but not by their corporate competitors. They’re finding themselve replaced by a ragtag assortment of podcasters, pranksters, pundits, gamers, gadflies, and influencers.
”
Monetisation strategies will get more creative
For a long time, ad revenue and affiliate marketing have been the main ways bloggers have made money.
The introduction of new technologies like Thatch, and the group trip platform, mean there are more ways to monetise than before.
Content creators are becoming indie travel planners.
Understanding search intent will be more important than ever before
No matter what people like to moan about, Google isn’t going anywhere. Sure, it has knocked back a lot of creators in the past couple of years, but I don’t think that means you shouldn’t work for organic search traffic from Google.
It’s the end of the ‘long tail keyword’ strategy. If your post is setting out to answer something that an AI overview can answer, it’s probably not worthy of a blog post.
What’s it like to solo travel in a particular country? People want to know real experiences
Travel itineraries are notoriously complex, so they can’t easily be produced by ChatGPT (and I’m confident about this because travel planning clients have literally told me that they tried to plan with AI and failed. That’s why they turned to a real person instead).
Your email list will only get more important
If bloggers have learned anything from the constant Google and social media algorithm updates, it’s that businesses built on another platform, or that rely on traffic from a search engine, are fragile indeed.
The only way to truly own your
If I were going to start my travel blog again from scratch, one of the key changes I would make is to start collecting email addresses from the get go. Don’t worry about what you’ll send them right away — just start making moves toward building your email list, even if that is just having a sign up option in your footer.
Use AI — but not to write
People will get more and more suspicious of AI written content. Even if you can’t quite tell if it’s real, but you suspect that it’s AI — you’re going to lose trust.
We live in an age where distrust is the default emotion.
Trust in governments, corporations, media, and other traditional institutions has been declining for years. The Edelman Trust Barometer paints a pretty bleak picture of this eroding trust.
The internet has democratized access to information but has also created a chaotic environment where truth and misinformation coexist. With so many conflicting sources, people struggle to determine what to trust, leading to skepticism by default.
Online interactions, often marked by anonymity, encourage toxic behavior and trolling.
People are increasingly aware that their personal data is often exploited without their consent.
Algorithms deliver tailored content but also enable manipulation, as seen in political campaigns, product marketing, and personalized ads. This creates a sense that digital interactions are crafted to influence rather than inform.
A lot of these factors are much more macro than bloggers will need to worry about. Meaning that not all (or any) of these feelings will be directed at you.
But what it means is that you’re operating in a culture of distrust, which creates a lot of opportunities for you to create stronger bonds with your audience.
“Widespread grievance is eroding trust across the board.
Those with a high sense of grievance distrust all four institutions (business, government, media, and NGOs).”
How? By being transparent. Don’t use AI to write your content.
Focus on quality over quantity. In 2023 people got excited that they could use AI to pump out content in mass, publishing hundreds of posts to their blogs.
In the future of blogging, I think it will be better to swing the other way. Have fewer posts, but better ones.
Blogging will become more of a media experience
While personal experience is more important, there is also more of a demand for bloggers to operate more like mini media companies.
This also relates to the monetisation strategies.
I was recently contacted by a media agency who were looking for a travel writer. They were working with a regional tourism board, and the brief involved sending someone to that region (all expenses covered, of course) so that the creator could write editorial articles, film video, and take photos.
The agency were contacting me because they loved my writing and photography. But, ultimately, despite my experience writing for some of the largest travel publications in the world, they passed on me.
Why?
Because I have never made Instagram reels for clients.
These days, you have to be a triple threat to really stand out, with writing, video, and photo skills. This applies to blogging, because blogging is just another form of content creation.
To stand out as a creator, you need to master more than one of these skills.
Curation is key
There was a moment there when SEO trends were driving blogging content to get longer and longer, to the point of being ridiculous.
I’m talking about blog posts reaching 10,000 words or more, lists of the “80 top things to do in one city!” And more.
Not only is it almost impossible for one person to experience this number of experiences, there are very few readers who want to read a blog post of that wild length.
One of the shifts that seems to be happening in the search algorithms is greater diversity of content in the search results. So, it’s no longer the longest post that’s seen as the best, but the ones that offer the best information.
What is it specifically that you can bring to the table?
What is the unique knowledge or experience that you have? People don’t want generic round ups of every restaurant in a city, they want to know the exact places you tried and which ones you liked, even if that
Google is still going to be the main driver of organic traffic for the foreseeable future
Despite the number of bloggers who say they have abandoned Google altogether, I don’t see user behaviour changing dramatically any time soon.
And that means Google is still going to be the default search engine for most people for a while.
In ten years, the search landscape might look a little different, but I would be confident in saying that for at least the next five, we still need to look to Google if you want to net organic search traffic.
Pinterest might work for some bloggers, but it serves a different function than Google, so it won’t replace Google as a traffic source.
Social media platforms continue to strangle external links and fight to keep people engaging with content on their respective apps, so that’s also out.
And email lists might drive the most engagement going forward, but you need to build the list in the first place.
If you found this helpful, you might also like to take a peek at my other tips on blogging on Squarespace:
READ MORE:
