I closed my blog last year, after more than ten years of creating admittedly uneven quality content. The impetus for me was that I was getting relatively good traffic but engagement was non-existent. I came to the conclusion I wasn't really getting anything out of it anymore, as far as I could tell neither was anyone else, and general IT blogs are a dime a dozen.
Absolutely, attracting a blog audience has become harder. The collapse of Google Reader, followed by the rise of Youtube and social media has caused this. You just don't build an audience for a blog anymore. You build an audience for your social media channels instead, and your blog becomes part of the content you share. It's now a delivery platform only.
So the question becomes instead how to a) attract social subscribers and b) get your content shared. Your content needs to cut through a lot of noise to get noticed. With very few exceptions I would say the answers for most blogs would be
1) produce content regularly, like clockwork
2) specialize into something unique to attract core followers first, you can always broaden later
3) compete with the big guys either in quality or in click-bait generation
I wouldn't branch too far out as far as cross-posting to different social networks is concerned. Identify 1-3 platforms and really engage people on those. Don't just spew links into the void.
I share your experience of blogging for 10 years before letting my blog go into neglect. I was a science blogger, and in 2007 we were a very small community of educators, PhDs, and science enthusiasts (I was an enthusiast). It was really exciting then because everyone knew each other and we had a yearly "Science Online" conference where just a few hundred people would show up and hang out. Then twitter, facebook, and the blogging world exploded. My traffic went up, but my engagement dropped to zero. I would gladly trade the traffic for thoughtful conversation.
It reminded me of the BBS days, where communities were small and local and we'd get together at the mall or house party to meet one another in person. Then everyone went to WWW, and suddenly I was just another post in a thread of hundreds.
I'm not sure how to get those small, close-communities full of engagement back. The best I have now is hanging out in-person at my local gaming shop and chatting with the locals on facebook.
Sometimes it's just time to move on. In the early days things were different, everybody had a blog, and you had no trouble making mutual connections. I met interesting people, had interesting discussions, sometimes you'd meet fellow bloggers at events and find out you're subscribed to each other. One time, I spent a week of my holidays at a famous tech blogger's house, on a whim, even though I had never met the guy before.
People moved on to other platforms, but I never built a social presence, nor did I do anything to really grow my audience.
> Can you give more info on how many people you had and how it tapered off?
Traffic wasn't that great by modern standards. According to Google Analytics, a good post would generate maybe 10-20k within the first month, and then taper off sharply. A bad post would not generate more than a few hundred eyeballs. My stuff was never monetized, so I didn't track visitors that well. Sometimes I saw there had been a crazy spike like months ago ;)
> If you wanted engagement, can you have added engagement features?
It's a matter of commitment. If I ever start anything again, that would definitely be a focus.
Absolutely, attracting a blog audience has become harder. The collapse of Google Reader, followed by the rise of Youtube and social media has caused this. You just don't build an audience for a blog anymore. You build an audience for your social media channels instead, and your blog becomes part of the content you share. It's now a delivery platform only.
So the question becomes instead how to a) attract social subscribers and b) get your content shared. Your content needs to cut through a lot of noise to get noticed. With very few exceptions I would say the answers for most blogs would be
1) produce content regularly, like clockwork
2) specialize into something unique to attract core followers first, you can always broaden later
3) compete with the big guys either in quality or in click-bait generation
I wouldn't branch too far out as far as cross-posting to different social networks is concerned. Identify 1-3 platforms and really engage people on those. Don't just spew links into the void.