“Blogging is dead.”
People say this every year. Then they write a 14-tweet thread, a Substack, and a Notion page. That’s… a blog with extra steps.
What’s dead is the SEO Mad Libs version—2500 words of oatmeal just to sell a toothbrush. What’s alive: a simple page on the internet where a real person solves a real problem, in their own voice.
I still find answers on scrappy personal blogs all the time. Last week, every search result was affiliate soup. The thing that helped? A plain, 2017 post from an engineer who wrote down the fix, screenshots and all. Fast, human, done.
If you want to “blog” in 2025 without hating yourself:
– Pick a home you control. yourname.com on Ghost, WordPress, or GitHub Pages. $10/year for a domain buys you independence.
– Keep it small. 300–600 words. One problem, one lesson. Add a screenshot or code snippet if it helps.
– Ship weekly. Put a 30‑minute block on Fridays. No draft survives more than 7 days. Publish at 80%.
– Distribute simply. Email + RSS + one social post. Title it clearly, write a clean meta description, move on. No keyword yoga.
– Track 3 numbers: posts published, replies received, top queries in Search Console. Ignore pageviews for 90 days.
– Keep a seed list. A single note in Obsidian/Notion/Apple Notes with half-sentences. Add 3 seeds a day. Writing day becomes picking, not struggling.
– Link yourself. One internal link per post. Your archive should talk to itself.
– Use a changelog style for work posts: what changed, why, result, next step. It’s unsexy and extremely useful.
Tools that don’t fight you: Ghost (blog + email), GitHub Pages + Jekyll (free, simple), Buttondown (clean email), Plausible (privacy-friendly analytics), Loom for a 60‑second summary you can embed.
Blogging isn’t dead. Perfectionism is. So is performative thought-leadership casserole. Write something small, honest, and specific for the five people who actually need it. The internet rewards that far more than we think.
