Recently, I’ve been seeing some discontent on Instagram about their new layout because it’s prioritising video (or as someone else put it: turning Instagram into another TikTok) and making it hard for Instagrammers to read captions. That got me thinking: Are book blogs poised for a comeback?
In general, I think there are two ways people can consume book-related information on the internet – through the written word or through video/audio. Neither is superior although as someone who’s writing this on a blog, I obviously prefer the written word because 1) I don’t have the patience for videos and 2) when I’m out, I’m not in the mood to watch videos in case I have to stop to catch a bus, tram, etc.
While Instagram is known for its pretty pictures, a lot of Bookstagrammers are also writing long, in-depth reviews and engaging with reviews in comments. So if Instagram is going to continue trying to push people towards videos, when they are not naturally video people, that might turn people off the platform.
But would that lead to another golden age of blogging? To be honest, I see two big obstacles:
- There’s no one blog reader that makes it easy to follow and comment on blog posts. WordPress.com’s blog reader comes closest, but even then, I sometimes have to click out of the reader to someone’s blog to read the full post. If you’re used to being able to consume all your bookish content on one platform, and especially if you’re used to consuming content on mobile, then getting used to following and commenting on blogs will take some time and effort. And if you start following people who blog on blogger, Wix, etc, then it’s even harder to keep all your feeds in one place if you want to like and comment on posts as well.
- It can be hard to discover new blogs and be discovered. Instagram has hashtags that you can follow to find new posts and new accounts. For book blogs, it’s much harder – if you start blogging without knowing any bloggers, it takes time and google to find blogs that you like, and then you have to find out how to follow them (not everyone has a ‘following’ button on their blog theme; if it’s a WordPress blog and I’m not on the reader, I quite often have to like a post to be able to find a way to follow it) and so on. It also’s hard to be discovered as a new blogger – unless you’re commenting on other people’s posts and getting them to visit your blog, people may not find you for a while.
This basically means that the social aspect of book blogs is not as strong. The book blogging community is definitely very friendly, but moving from an essentially all-in-one app to a collection of disparate blog posts is a big one. And I would think that the social aspect of the bookish community would be very important to people who are looking for an alternative to Instagram, because if they didn’t need to engage, they could be on Goodreads or even just writing their reviews in a journal.
As much as I would love to see people move away from platforms to more independent blogs, I’m afraid that I don’t see that happening anytime soon. The strength of the book blogging community – that we are basically independent blogs that are not dependent on an algorithm to boost us – can also be a weakness for people who are looking for a quick entry and engagement with a bookish community.
Of course, I could be wrong. If you’re on Instagram and you are experiencing the new layout, what do you think of it? Does it want to make you move back to blogging or will you stay?
I’m not on Instagram, but I will be interested to see what other commenters say on your post. The whole social media/algorithms thing is a bit of an alien world to me. And my natural element is long-form, written word … or long-form videos, and I have a lot of patience with extended discussions in the comments of YouTube or Locals videos or posts.
I have recently found out that “book trailers” are a thing. Basically, that’s a short video to advertise a book. I am contemplating making one, at the same time realizing that I am definitely a text girl not a video girl. It’s tempting to say, “why would a reader be finding out about a book through a video?” but I know that’s not the world we live in. I myself have discovered some favorite books and authors because they were mentioned on video or audio podcasts.
It can be hard to be a text person and feel the need to also be a video person! I downloaded tiktok because everyone was talking about booktok and promptly… didn’t feel engaged, though I have friends who apparently used tiktok for hours the first time they used the app!
I get your point. Blogs have its pros and cons and social media lovers will like to stay there than clicking links to blog. People have less time theses days and short and aesthetic content of Instagram makes it easy for fast life. It’s the reason I focus on social media as much as I do on my blog.
Yup, Instagram is very easy to use on the go and it’s appeal can’t be denied
You make two really good points! For me, the biggest obstacle is finding new blogs, even today I still struggle with that. It’s more complicated and takes more time than finding a new account to follow on Instagram or another social media, which is probably discouraging for newcomers.
I agree that there will always be an audience for writing rather than video, and that’s why I think that blogging will never “die,” no matter how many times people predict it. I personally would rather read than watch a video or look at a picture, so I prefer blogging, and that’s not going to change.
Yes, discovery is another one! It’s so hard to organically stumble across blogs – I’m really grateful to bloggers who post links to cool posts (maybe I should do that too)
I’m not sure if blogs will make a comeback, but I too am annoyed by IG prioritizing videos on my feed. I think it’s partly why I turn to the platform less these days. Sometimes, a video is recommended after every photo. It’s annoying.
I’m also getting annoyed by the number of suggested posts! Luckily the following page is available but it’s not the most intuitive page to get to
I would definitely love to see more people checking out blogs, but at the same time I really do like the current set up for Bookstagram and I’m mad they screwed with it!
Right? I opened the app today to find out that there are paid subscriptions and I’m just wondering what other surprises are coming next!
instagram has never been a place that i really like because of the dependency on visual content. i’m not great at photography and hate videos too. nowadays, i barely open the app at all. i’m still trying to have an account there but i have no idea about what to do with it. it’s as per my whims. but no i still don’t think people will shift to blogs because of the reasons you said plus it is not a LOT of people who are dissatisfied with IG making it hard for WORDY content. in the large scale userbase, there must be a reason they’re switching to video, probably because majority users do interact with videos more and longer. i don’t think blogging will face any significant jump in viewership or people.
I really think that there are two types of people – those who prefer blogs (like you and me) and those who are huge video people (like my sister and many of my friends) and I guess IG is catering to the second group!
Yes, I keep seeing people discontent with social media and proposing going somewhere they have more control (i.e. a blog), but I agree with you that blogging’s biggest “issue” is the lack of one central place and an algorithm that keeps throwing content from other users at you.
Yup! Blogs are not as addictive as social media, which is good but also bad for people who are used to a feed that caters/tries to predict the content you want