The scenario of the blogging world is a lot different today than what it was when I started. I began blogging in 2005, the time when online business transactions didn’t even exist. At that point, affiliate marketing was booming and probably the only method through which bloggers made money. Thus, we began growing our business with the affiliate marketing model. I was writing and sharing my thoughts on different portals and managed a bouquet of sites. I started by maintaining a blog and made use of SEO techniques which helped my blog gain visibility. At that time blogs were majorly hosted on Blogger & WordPress, and by learning the tricks of the trade, I evolved as a power user. Understanding and the framework of SEO helped me generate content that would appear on the first search result page of the search engine. Doing so helped my blog evolve as the top read portal of that time.

The advent of social media made me quite active on Instagram and Twitter. Personally, I love taking photographs, and therefore I became a power user of Instagram. I think blogging for me was a great opportunity because this is something I like doing and I believe that everyone must have a blog even if they are not looking at the monetary aspect of it, it helps you to build a sole authority and respect.

Nowadays, blogging has evolved in more ways than one. We collaborate with brands and create various types of branded content. Blogging was primarily about having a website and sharing the knowledge of a topic, but these days it’s also about creating platform centric content. However, aspiring bloggers should realise that there is a stark difference between a blogger and a social media influencer. Since most new-age bloggers are unable to identify this difference, hence they have not been able to become credible.

New age bloggers need to learn ethics and morals of journalism, which is a big difference between bloggers and journalists. Doing so will help the bloggers to bring credibility and to build a loyal fan base. And, eventually, it’s all about your audience, whether you are running a blog, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter account. You are nothing without your audience.

Recently we were invited by Pearl Academy for the launch of the school of media and journalism. We were part of a panel discussion on future of blogging along with Naina Redhu, Riaan George – Urban Eye, Sukhneet Wadhwa – Ms Coco Queen, Pallavi Chaturvedi – That Desi Girl & Abhijeet Mukherjee – Guiding Tech, here is the full video.