- There are over 1.94 billionwebsites on the internet. There are over a billionblogs on the internet. That's roughly one blog for every seven people in this world. There are over four million blog posts that are being publishedeach and every single day. Hi, everyone, I'm Neil Patel. And today, I'm going toanswer the question of is blogging still worth it? (upbeat music) Before we get started, make sure you subscribe to this channel. If you're on YouTube, clickthe alert notification. This way, whenever I go livewhether it's on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, you'll get notified. Now, the short answerto this question is no. The long answer to the question is yes. Now, don't just shut off this video and stop blogging if you have a blog. In the traditional sense,blogging is not worth it, of just creating text-basedcontent, cranking out a ton, and expecting it to do wonders for you. Here's what you need to doif you want to still thrive in the blogging worldtoday and in the future. Number one, don't justfocus on text-based content. Traditionally, blogs werejust text-based content and that's what people would publish. And they would justsay, here's my website, here's a blog post, and that's it. And that's great, but you know what? Now, text-based content isn't everything. We all use somethingcalled a mobile phone. This mobile phone, peopleare using it to watch videos, listen to podcasts. So when you're blogging, don'tjust blog text-based content. Create video-based content. Create audio-based content. Publish that on your blog. Also publish it on other channels as well. And that's the second thingthat I wanted to get into. Blogging is no long about justputting content on your site. That content should sit everywhere. You may be wondering, Neil, but Google penalizesfor duplicate content. No, that's a myth. Google does not penalizefor duplicate content. They've stated it publicly, so you don't have to worry about that. So take that blog text-basedcontent that you have, also repost it on Facebook. Also repost it on LinkedIn. Right? You want to put it wherever you can. Heck, I would even createa medium.com account, and repost it on Medium as well. Take your videos, put it on YouTube, put it on LinkedIn, put it on Facebook, put it on Instagram TV. Have you noticed whereveryou're watching this video, go to any other socialnetwork, look me up, you'll see the same video. Why? Because I post the samecontent everywhere. Some people use YouTube,some people use Facebook. People are spread on allthese social platforms. I want to capture them everywhere. The third thing that you need to know is blogging on how it used to be, in which you just createtext-based content, you rank, you drive thattraffic to a product or service, collect leads, you do well. Blogging doesn't work that way anymore. Blogging is very expensive. And here's what I mean. Let's say you get these rankings. Then Google comes around,they release a Google update. Have you noticed that thepeople that get hit the most with these updates and don't rank as high, are the sites that aren'tupdating their content? Look at Wikipedia. Whatever you search for, I bet you they're probably on page one. Why, because Wikipediais constantly updating that same article over and over again. Yes, maybe they're not doingit, but the community is. The same will go with your website. If you update your contentover and over again, keep it fresh, up to datewith the latest and greatest, you're going to do better. But if you don't, you'll notice that your rankings willcontinually slip over time. Maybe not your main pageor the parent pages, but your pages that are goingafter long-tail phrases, those are the onesthat'll continually slip if you're not updating yourcontent on a regular basis. To give you idea, currently, I have three people employed full time, all they do is update myold text-based content. If you do all of that, you'llalso find that blogging still doesn't produce asbig of a ROI as it did four, five, six years ago. And why is this? It's because no matter where people are and what they're using,it's harder to convert them, especially on these mobile devices. Harder to convert them off of YouTube than it is from your own domain. Harder to convert them fromFacebook than your own domain, because Facebook wantsto keep people on there so they make more ad revenue. So this is the last tip,and this will end up making blogging worth itfor you to continually do. You got to continually collectemails and push subscribers. So you can use tools like subscribers.com or Hello Bar or Mailchimp. Use whatever you want. If you continually get these people to come back to your site, get them to subscribe. That'll give you a shot atselling those people over time. If you don't sell them over time, it won't do as well for you. If you expect people tojust watch a YouTube video or a Facebook video, andbuy from you right away, it's not going to happen. That's why it's very importantto build that audience through email, push whenthey come to your site, and get them to keepcontinually come back, so that way you canconvert them over time. If you make those changes and you adapt, blogging is still worth it. If you don't and you justwant to focus on writing a text-based content, neverupdate it, write me-too content, and the same stuff that everyoneelse is going to write on, you're not going to do that well. But when you change tothat fresh new perspective, that's when you'll notice you're still going toget a ROI from blogging. If you need help withyour content marketing, generating a better ROIand getting more traffic.