[Kye]

Something even more pernicious about social media: if you build an audience there, you're trapped. You can easily convince yourself a lot of people care about what you say right up until you link to something more substantial off the silo.

The ActivityPub fediverse is a lot better about this, but even there I might get one visit to a linked page for every ten boosts.

Getting people to look at a website in 2019 is hard. It used to be easier. I could get 1000 people to look at a blog post on just about anything. Now all the eyes are on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, and you can't pry them away. You might get lucky and land on a long tail keyword that Google ranks you for, but search traffic is unpredictable even if you go out of your way to research keywords.

I get 140k views a month and tons of retweets/likes on Twitter when I'm active. The website has a few posts with some search traffic, but nothing like 140k.

[a3n]

Rather than focusing on how many views you get, you could think of a personal website as serving two purposes: 1) A place where people who know you can keep up or catch up when they feel like it, or when/if you ping them, and 2) A place where people who just met or became aware of you can get to know you better.

With those two purposes in mind, just write, when you feel like it.

[movedx]

> Now all the eyes are on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, and you can't pry them away.

This is very true. I've got a YouTube channel and I'm developing premium training solutions on the side of it in Podia... video is king.

People want high value (to learn something) wrapped in high quality and compacted into a 5-10 (max) minute video. And they want it for free... sigh.

Remember, though, that Google is the #1 search engine, so blogging (and SEO) is still important to drive traffic towards your videos. That being said videos will take over.

I can't remember where I saw the statistic, but I believe it said in the next 5-10 years at least three billion people are coming online and they want video, because video is how they want to consume knowledge.

I think people should start picking up a camera.

[Kye]

It sounds like you're talking about one specific kind of content: educational material. That's not what I make or have any interest in making.

And there is no way I'd get on camera even if I wanted to do video. I do not believe video will come to dominate such that text and audio won't still have a place. I personally can't get much out of most non-fiction videos, and I know I'm not alone. I didn't even watch more than 0-2 YouTube videos a month until I found ContraPoints and got pulled into lefttube.

[movedx]

> It sounds like you're talking about one specific kind of content: educational material

I personally make educational videos, but that's not what dominates on YouTube :-)

> I do not believe video will come to dominate such that text and audio won't still have a place.

They will have a place, for sure. Podcasts are still rising in popularity - they're a great platform for transferring knowledge and value and also debating.

> I personally can't get much out of most non-fiction videos, and I know I'm not alone.

People learn in different ways. Most people are visual, however, and video/interaction/workshops are the most popular means of learning for an incredibly large portion of the population. Source: married to a teacher.

[a3n]

> > I do not believe video will come to dominate such that text and audio won't still have a place.

I almost never follow links to video, because you can't scan them for relevance and quickly bail.

[movedx]

Sounds like a poorly managed video, then. Loads of options for making it easier to find specific parts of a video. Google even includes that ability in searches now.

[timw4mail]

I loathe video for learning.

And most of the time when I'm web browsing, I do not want anything with sound.

[movedx]

Whelp... if one person doesn't like video, I guess no one does.

I'll get my coat and see my self out. No point carrying on with video, it seems.