1. “Is It Even Worth It?”
Alright, let’s be real for a second.
You finally did it. You fought through the frustration of building a WordPress website. You spent hours staring at that blinking cursor, pouring your knowledge into what you think is a pretty awesome blog post. You add the final period, hit that shiny “Publish” button, and feel a rush of excitement.
You wait for the views to roll in.
And you wait.
A day goes by. You check your stats. Three views. “Okay,” you think, “it’s just the first day.”
A week later, you check again. Five views. And you’re pretty sure two of them are from you, checking if it looks right.
Sound familiar? If it does, you’re not alone.
Then, to make things worse, you go on YouTube to find a solution, and all you see are videos with scary titles like: “BLOGGING IS DEAD!” and “GOOGLE’S AI WILL KILL YOUR WEBSITE!”
They talk about how Google’s new AI search results answer questions right at the top, so no one clicks on websites anymore. They show graphs of traffic plummeting. It feels like you started playing a game only to find out the rules changed and everyone else has a huge head start.
It’s enough to make you want to close your laptop and never open it again.
So, let me ask you the question that’s probably screaming in your head: “Is this even worth it? Did I waste all that time?”
Here’s the truth: No, you didn’t waste your time. But you might be using a playbook from 2015 to play a game in 2025.
The bloggers who are saying “blogging is dead” are right… but only if you’re doing it the old way. The game has changed, and honestly? The new way is actually more fun.
Let’s talk about how to actually win.
2. The Cold Hard Truth: Why “Build It And They Will Come” is a Fairy Tale in 2025
Remember that old saying from that movie? “If you build it, they will come.”
For a long, long time, that was the unofficial motto of blogging. You could write a decent post about the right keyword, and eventually, Google would send people your way. It was slow, but it worked.
In 2025? That motto is a fantasy. It’s like hoping you can open a lemonade stand in the middle of a desert and have a line of customers show up.
It’s not that your lemonade isn’t good. It’s that no one knows you’re there, and the few people passing by are being handed free lemonade by a giant robot before they even see your stand.
Let me break down exactly what that giant robot is doing:
First, there’s the “Answer Engine.” Google doesn’t just want to show you 10 blue links anymore. With its AI (called Search Generative Experience or SGE), it wants to answer your question right at the top of the page. It summarizes information from websites and puts it in a nice, neat box.
Think about what that means for you, the blogger:
- Someone searches “how to fix a leaky faucet.”
- Instead of clicking on a blog post, they get the step-by-step answer from Google’s AI.
- They get what they need without ever clicking your website. Game over.
Second, Google plays favorites. It trusts websites that have been around for years and have a ton of authority. It’s like trying to get a job without any work experience on your resume. Why would a company hire you when there are 100 people with 10 years of experience applying for the same job?
Websites like Reddit, Quora, Forbes, and big-name blogs are those experienced applicants. Google sends people to them first. Your new, awesome blog? It’s at the back of the line.
And third, let’s be honest: attention spans are gone. People aren’t just casually browsing blogs anymore. They’re scrolling through TikTok, watching YouTube shorts, and diving into conversations on LinkedIn and Twitter.
If you’re just sitting on your website waiting for Google to send visitors, you’re waiting for a bus that stopped running years ago.
This sounds depressing, I know. But it’s not the end of your blogging dream.
It’s just the end of the old way of blogging. Once you understand that the game has completely changed, you can stop following the old, broken rules and start playing a new, much more interesting game.
And the best part? This new game is built on something AI can never truly have: your unique personality and your voice.
Let’s talk about how to make that shift.
3. The Mindset Shift: You’re Not a Blogger. You’re a Content Creator.
Okay, so the old rulebook is out the window. Tear it up. Throw it away.
This is where most people get stuck. They keep doing the same thing (writing -> publishing -> hoping), just a little harder and a little sadder. But what if I told you the solution isn’t to try harder at the old game? It’s to play a completely different game.
It’s time for a mindset shift. This is the most important part of this entire article, so lean in.
Stop thinking of yourself as a “blogger.”
That word comes with a bunch of old ideas: sitting alone, writing into a void, and being at the mercy of Google’s mysterious algorithm.
From now on, I want you to think of yourself as a Content Creator.
What’s the difference? It sounds like just a fancy new title, but it changes everything:
- A blogger has a destination (their blog).
- A content creator has a home base (their blog) and outposts everywhere (social media).
Let’s break that down, because it’s everything.
Your blog is your Home Base.
This is your owned land on the internet. It’s the one place you truly control. No algorithm can suddenly take it away from you. This is where you park your biggest, best, and most valuable stuff—your deep-dive articles, your case studies, your free resources. It’s your library.
But a library with no signs pointing to it will stay empty.
That’s where the outposts come in. These are your social media platforms: LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest—wherever your potential audience is already hanging out.
Your job is no longer to wait for people to find your library. Your job is to go to the busy town squares (social media) and offer people a fascinating map that leads back to your library.
You’re not just a writer; you’re a storyteller. And a single story can be told in many different ways.
That one big blog post you worked on?
- The main conclusion becomes a Twitter thread.
- A key statistic becomes a cool-looking Instagram or LinkedIn graphic.
- A personal story from it becomes a 90-second TikTok video.
- The entire post gets summarized in a LinkedIn article.
You’re not just creating one piece of content and hoping it works. You’re creating a content ecosystem where everything feeds into everything else. Social media drives traffic to your home base, and your home base gives you the deep content to talk about on social media.
The goal flips. It’s no longer “How do I get SEO traffic?”
The new goal is: “How do I build an audience that trusts me?”
And trust me, an audience that knows and likes you will gladly visit your home base, no matter what Google’s AI is doing. This is how you win in 2025.
Ready to see what this looks like in practice? Let’s get tactical.
4. The 2025 Game Plan: How to Actually Get Readers (And Why It’s More Fun)
Alright, enough theory. Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. How do you actually do this? It might feel overwhelming, but I’m going to break it down into four simple steps. This is your new playbook.
Step 1: Find Your People (Before You Write a Word)
This is the biggest mistake new creators make. They write in a vacuum about what they think is interesting. Stop that.
Your first step isn’t to write; it’s to listen.
Go to where your potential audience already is. For us in digital marketing, that’s places like:
- Reddit: Subreddits like r/SEO, r/digitalmarketing, r/juststart.
- Twitter/X: Follow hashtags like #SEOTwitter, #DigitalMarketing.
- LinkedIn Groups: Search for groups about content marketing, SEO, entrepreneurship.
Your only job here is to read. What questions are people asking over and over? What are they struggling with? What jokes are they making? What problems make them pull their hair out?
That right there is your list of blog post ideas. You’re not guessing what might get SEO traffic; you’re finding real, live people with real, painful problems that you can solve. This is the biggest cheat code there is.
Step 2: Write a “Link-Worthy” Piece, Not a “Keyword-Rich” One
Forget writing 10 okay posts. Focus on writing one amazing, 10/10 masterpiece that becomes the go-to resource on a topic.
What makes a post “10/10”?
- It’s Insanely Helpful: It solves one specific problem completely.
- It Has Your Voice: It’s not a boring AI-generated article. It has your personality, your mistakes, your funny stories. People connect with people, not robots.
- It’s a “Content Fortress”: It’s so good that other people want to link to it and share it. It might include a unique case study, a step-by-step tutorial with your own screenshots, or a controversial (but well-argued) opinion.
This one fantastic post is your home base’s foundation. It’s the main attraction you’ll point everyone to.
Step 3: The Magic of Repurposing (Your Secret Weapon)
You just spent 10 hours on that amazing post. You’re not done! Now, you need to squeeze every single drop of value out of it.
This is where you become a content wizard. Take that one pillar post and break it into a dozen pieces for your social media outposts:
- Turn the main takeaway into a catchy Twitter/LinkedIn Thread.
- Take one surprising statistic and make it a shareable graphic for Instagram.
- Explain one key concept in a 60-second TikTok or YouTube Short.
- Use a personal story from it as the script for a longer LinkedIn video.
- Summarize the whole thing in a newsletter email to your subscribers.
You’re not starting from scratch every time. You’re recycling your best work and putting it in front of people who prefer different formats. This is how you stay consistent without burning out.
Step 4: Become a Community Member, Not a Broadcaster
This is the final, most important piece. You can’t just show up, drop your link, and run away. That’s spam.
The 80/20 rule is golden here:
- Spend 80% of your time on social media just being a good community member. Answer questions, leave thoughtful comments on other people’s posts, share their work, and crack jokes. Add value without asking for anything in return.
- Spend 20% of your time sharing your own content.
When you do share your link, it won’t feel like an ad. It’ll feel like a valued community member sharing something helpful. And people will be happy to click because they already know and like you.
This is the new game. It’s not passive. It’s active. It’s not about tricking an algorithm; it’s about connecting with human beings. And honestly? It’s a million times more rewarding than just staring at your Google Analytics dashboard and hoping for a green line.
5. My Own Experiment: Doing This Myself
Look, I get it. It’s easy for me to sit here and tell you all this. You might be thinking, “That sounds great in theory, but does it actually work?”
That’s a fair question. So let me pull back the curtain and show you what this looks like in real life, right now, on my own site.
Remember that first blog post I wrote? The one about “How I Built My First WordPress Website (And the 5 Big Mistakes I Made)”? I didn’t just publish it and hope.
I put this exact strategy to the test.
Step 1: I found my people. I knew other people in my digital marketing course were also struggling with WordPress. My audience was right there.
Step 2: I wrote a “10/10” post. I didn’t just write a quick tip. I made it personal. I talked about my frustration, my stupid mistakes, and the exact steps I took to fix them. I included my own screenshots. I made it something only I could write.
Step 3: I repurposed the hell out of it. After I hit publish, the work began:
- I took the list of 5 mistakes and turned it into a thread on Twitter and LinkedIn. I didn’t just say “here’s a link.” I wrote out the best tips right in the thread.
- I grabbed one of the key takeaways and made a simple graphic in Canva.
- I talked about my biggest “aha!” moment in a quick video.
Step 4: I joined the conversation. I shared my thread in a few friendly online communities where I knew other beginners were hanging out. But first, I scrolled through and answered a few other people’s questions.
The result?
That post didn’t get a trickle of traffic from Google. It got a wave of traffic from real people. In the first week, most of my visitors came from LinkedIn and Twitter. I got comments, questions, and messages from people saying, “Thank you, I was stuck on the exact same thing!”
It wasn’t millions of views, but it was more powerful: it was engagement. It was proof that I had helped someone.
I’m not some expert with a huge audience. I’m a student, just like you might be, testing things out in public. And this focused, repurposing, community-based strategy is the only reason that post got seen by anyone.
The old way would have meant that post just sat there, collecting digital dust. The new way gave it a life of its own.
This isn’t just a theory. It’s a blueprint. And it’s working for me right now, as I’m building my own “Digital Marketing Lab” from the ground up.
6. Conclusion: The Bottom Line
So, let’s wrap this up.
We started with that feeling of dread. That “why does nobody read my stuff?” feeling. That fear that you’ve missed the boat, that the game is over before you even got to play.
I want you to close your eyes for a second and let that feeling go. Just release it.
Because here’s the bottom line, the one thing I really, really want you to take away from all of this:
Blogging isn’t dead. Passive, impersonal, generic blogging is dead.
And honestly? Good riddance.
That old way was lonely. It was you versus a mysterious algorithm. It was a hope and a prayer that Google might someday decide to bless you with a little bit of attention.
The new way—the real way to win in 2025—is alive and kicking. It’s vibrant. It’s not about you versus an algorithm; it’s about you connecting with other people. It’s about building your own little corner of the internet where people come because they know you, they like you, and they trust what you have to say.
You are not just a content creator. You are a community builder. Your blog is your home, and social media is how you invite people over.
And the most beautiful part? This is a game where AI cannot compete. AI can write words. It can even mimic a tone. But it cannot replicate your unique journey. It cannot share your specific failures and what they taught you. It doesn’t have your sense of humor, your weird obsessions, or your passion.
Your voice is not just an asset; it is your entire advantage.
This isn’t the end of blogging. This is the return of what made the internet amazing in the first place: real people connecting with real people.
You have a voice. You have something to say. And now, you have a map for how to be heard.
The only question left is: what will you build with it?
This journey is more fun with others. I’m documenting my own wins and fails in my newsletter. No fluff, just real numbers and lessons. [Join me here].
