Do you remember when adding images to blog posts was a new and exciting thing? Being able to add a video was an amazing innovation in 2008… Canva really changed our workflows and sped things up in 2013. It was no longer essential to have an expensive Adobe subscription to create branded images, no learning curve with Photoshop… Nothing stays the same in any niche or industry.
Blogging has really changed since I started blogging for business in 2006.
In 2009 the big thing was a tool called Popup Domination. These are popup templates for building your email list. I thought it was a fad, as all I ever saw online was complaints about how intrusive people found it. And then… I tried it. It truly was listbuilding on steroids. Since then, pop-ups have changed. They can be trained to show when someone goes to close the tab, or when someone reaches a certain point in the content. I use Convertbox currently for my popups and I love the features it has.
In 2011 the big innovation was the ability to create a landing page quickly and easily. By 2013 Lead Pages dominated the market. Clients didn't fully embrace the power of landing pages, and my most traffic'd blog post was on the topic of WordPress landing page plugins. Now these are known as page builders, and you have a hard choice to make when choosing one. I still use and love Thrive Architect.
By early 2015, all people spoke about on the Online World was Clickfunnels and 5 Day Challenges. More and more people looked for technology to overcome their hurdles that's easy to use and doesn't require a degree in software engineering to understand it.
On your blog, you can write about what used to be popular advice within your niche but now it’s not relevant. That could be because new information has come out that makes what was true before either obsolete or shows it was based on bad advice.
Predicting The Future
Around the last few months of the year, predicting what will be hot or not in the next year is popular. Some things are timeless, and other things are open to the trends of the moment. In 2017 Messenger Marketing was predicted to be the next huge thing, but it's never become mainstream.
The Pandemic changed things significantly. Hybrid working is now the norm, and people don't look at you funny when you say you work from home!
Right now, everything TikTok is popular. So predictions around TikTok are going to get attention. If you're not on TikTok you're invisible to Gen Z.
Post about the trajectory of your niche going forward and how you believe the future is going to impact and change it. You can bring in a wide array of topics, like strategies, products, mindsets and other things to show how change has occurred in your niche.
Format for This Type of Content
This type of content does well as an infographic, and as a text-based blog post. Better still… Have them both in the post.
Timing of this post can make a huge difference to your traffic. If you post around the Christmas/New Year time you'll tap into the looking back/forward that's happening naturally around you.
Calls to Action for This Content
If you've included visual elements in your post, then ask to be pinned on Pinterest. If you're going all-in with predicting the future content ask for the subscription.