Webolution: Blogging is Changing. Forever.

Whether you’re an entrepreneurial blogger or a corporate marketer, you need to know that blogging is going through some big changes. The blogs of tomorrow will not look like the blogs of today.

This revolution on the web is happening because the internet is changing. There’s more.

• More video
• More users
• More site creators

2 Revolution Predictors and 2 Change-Drivers

A couple of eBooks I’ve read recently; John Reese’s Rebirth of Internet Marketing and Jack Humphrey’s Authority Blackbook both talk about the importance of authority. They talk about how targeted and focused blogs and websites will better serve a niche audience as well as the search engines.

The more content you have that’s relevant to your niche, the better an authority you’ll be. And the more relevant your blog will be to your niche. A sensible prediction when you look at how the internet is growing, eCommerce is growing. And how competition on the web is growing.

Two major change drivers that are putting greater importance on authority are Nielsen and Google. Neilsen is using a new metric to rank websites; time. The thinking is, the more time visitors spend on your blog, the more relevant it must be. Video, anyone?

Google is moving towards becoming a multimedia search engine. And their Universal Search initiative is designed to capture the most relevant search results including websites, blogs, news pieces, images and video, and put that mash on page one of the results.

Universal Search means that building your authority is a multimedia challenge. Optimizing your images, video, and content to fit your niche is becoming more important to helping your audience find you via search.

The Tools of Blogging are Becoming More Sophisticated

WordPress just keeps getting better. It’s steadily evolving from a simple blogging platform into a full featured content management system. It’s a platform that’s increasingly capable of creating more and more sophisticated and interesting blogs.

And the 3rd party plugins available for WordPress are stepping up to the plate as well. I’ve been playing around with Ozh’s Who-Sees-Ads plugin here on Zoomstart. It allows you to target ads using any number of parameters, both default and one’s you custom program.

But it’s more than that. Who-Sees-Ads is amazingly dynamic. You can use the plugin to create special messages like “subscribe to my blog” that only new visitors see. The possibilities of serving dynamic, targeted content to your visitors using this plugin are literally endless.

Smart Blogs and Designers are Paving the Way

The look and feel of some well known blogs has been changing. Copyblogger’s new design by Chris Pearson and John Chow’s new theme by Nate Whitehill are packing more punch into every page than ever before.

And probably the biggest revolution in blog design recently has to be Ben Bleikamp’s redesign of Darren Rowse’s Problogger. With a static front page highlighting blog posts, features, video-of-the-week, and subscriber signup, they’re taking full advantage of the metric of time and the benefits of multimedia search.

There’s a revolution coming. Are you up for it?