October 8, 2015: Long-form “blogging” has come in and out of style since the dawn of the Web. From Geocities to LiveJournal to Xanga to WordPress to Medium, “blogs” have surged in popularity and “died” several times over.
Social network platforms have lately become important hosting platforms for blog-style content. Wired has coined the term “plogging” (aka. platform blogging) to describe this new phenomenon.
What “plogging” network should host your long-form content? We have some suggestions:
Medium
Medium provides a simple, beautiful way to present thoughts in depth. The platform provides a large-format canvas for words and images, as well as a comment/like system that helps you get feedback. Medium doesn’t have as large a social graph or as well developed a targeting system as Facebook, but it positions itself as a place where “words count,” making it a great platform for writers and journalists who are serious about their craft.
LinkedIn Publisher, still pretty new, is a good way to establish yourself as an influencer. Generally, it’s best to confine the range of post topics to those typically under discussion in your business (although some ignore this and post whatever they want, creating the risk of annoying connections who prefer more focused conversation). Publisher is great for “influencers,” business owners, and executives.
Facebook Notes
Facebook has reworked Notes to look like Medium but with the reaching power of your typical Facebook post (provided, of course, that it is Boosted). You can add keywords to your Notes, making it more likely to turn up in searches. If you’re already putting money behind your Facebook presence, you’ll probably get the best results from Notes. Are the people who primarily use Facebook to get news the customers you wish to attract? Notes may provide an answer. Just remember that the mere fact that you have the budget to boost Notes content doesn’t mean that you don’t have to labor to make such Boosted content interesting.
Tumblr
Tumblr is great for young, creative brands and writers that wish to speak to a specifically young generation. Tumblr does decently in search (but generally not as well as LinkedIn/Facebook) and can help you build a very loyal, content-hungry following. Tumblr is for serious creators only, or else it’s pointless. On Tumblr, it’s permissible to share short-form content (but you’ll likely have to invest time to create attractive graphics and perhaps video elements to achieve any level of virality). Of all the “plogging” networks, Tumblr is the most customizable.
Twitter?
Traditionally “fast” networks are even looking to get in on the plogging action. Twitter recently announced that it’s experimenting with content over 140 characters long, and Snapchat introduced its “Discover” with well-known publishers. Both platforms have also introduced curated “live” events in the past year.
Traditional blogging isn’t dead. It’s hard to say that anything online is truly “dead,” as illustrated by the recent surge of once-“dead” private messaging (Goodbye AIM of the 90’s, Hello WhatsApp).
To Blog or to Plog?
GIF via giphy.com
Many brands/influencers/marketers will likely be taking advantage of the functionality offered by the blogging platforms from big wig social media networks such as Facebook, which unlike the open web, offer the advantages of superior targeting against a built-in social graph.
However, we definitely recommend keeping your existing publishing set up (WordPress blog hosted on your own domain) intact, in order to accumulate SEO credit and domain authority. Doing this also insulates your content investment against the inevitable waxing and waning of influence among the social networks. Additionally, the content you publish to your own site will also be free of any restrictive content policies that the social networks have in place or are likely to add in the future. And of course what you do on your own domain — the partners you link to, the ads you run, or the other monetization mechanisms you employ are all under your control — not Mark Zuckerberg’s.
At the same time, however, there’s nothing to lose from experimenting with plogging. You may find it easier to reach certain audiences on these platforms (especially if you do what they really want, which is to pay for post exposure). And you might enjoy a bit of first-mover advantage that can accrue to those who arrive first on a platform and successfully colonize it.
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