Interviews With Bloggers, What I Learnt And What It Means For You

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I’ve always found conversations with other bloggers to be encouraging, enlightening, informing and lots of times entertaining. It’s a lot of fun to be able to chat about things that you love with others. One of the things I did in 2024 was interview four bloggers in different niches and share those videos in The Blogging Room.

And ever since I did, I’ve been thinking about a) how much fun it was doing those interviews but also b) how much you can actually draw out of and learn from the conversations we had.

In this blog post, we’re going to take a look at 6 things I learnt that came up across the interviews with bloggers, and what that might mean for you and your blog.

Let’s get into it.

Things we’ve learnt as bloggers over the years

The importance of diversifying content

You know that saying, ‘variety is the spice of life’? Well, turns out it is cheesy, and cliche, but also true for blogging.

One of the things that came up in conversations with these bloggers was the importance of diversifying our blog content. Mixing it up with different types of posts – like how-to guides, listicles, and personal stories, too – can keep your audience coming back for more.

It also appeals to different types of readers. Perhaps someone doesn’t love the list posts. Well, there are other options for them on your blog, whether they’re clicking around on your site, or they’re coming straight to a blog post they’ve seen in a google search.

Here are some different types of blog posts you could create:

Lists
Tutorials or how-tos
Story-based blog posts
Interview posts
Infographics
Checklists
Reviews

Engagement matters and can make a big difference

Sometimes it can be hard to get people’s eyes on our content. It’s not uncommon to feel like you’re shouting out your blog posts into a void.

But one of the things that can really help is building a community around your blog. What that looks like looks different for bloggers.

Here some examples of engaging with your community:

Responding to comments and encouraging people to leave them
Creating a sense of community on social media
Make a Facebook group to go with your blog
Starting your email list and sending warm and welcoming emails

Updating older blog posts can give them a good boost

Revisiting your older posts can be either embarrassing or have a high potential chance. Those blog posts that perhaps we shared years ago might still be online, but they’re probably not doing your blog an favours.

When I was talking to these bloggers, I think in every discussion we talked about updating older blog posts, what that looks like, and how it can give a wee boost to your blog. If we’ve updated things like the SEO, or we reshared it to our community, then we can start to see some life coming back to those posts.

You also might find some hidden gems, or see something that sparks some more inspiration for future blog posts.

A couple of pointers for updating old blog posts

Try to set up a bit of a schedule. I like to try and update a blog post a week.
It might not need a huge rehaul; just a check in of your keywords, make sure the facts are up to date
Think about any blog posts you have written in the past that could link in nicely with current ones and update those ones to link them together
If there are some that you think have no hope, it’s okay get rid of them. Pop a redirect in to a similar post, or back to your homepage.

The balance challenge

Sometimes finding the balance between what we want to write, and what our audience wants to read, can be a challenge. Especially if you’re running a business.

We talked about finding that balance in these interviews with bloggers, and how we go about embracing the creative side of blogging, while also ensuring that if one of our goals is to make money, that we’re moving in the right direction for that, as well.

And there’s no right answer here. We all need to figure out how best to tackle that balance, and it might take time to get it to a place where we’re comfortable and confident in.

A couple of pointers for finding balance:

If you want to write for you and for your audience and they’re not the same vibe of post, alternate.
Another way of selling your products or services or affiliate links etc is to just have a sentence or short paragraph at the end of a blog post, if it makes sense.
If you’re in a space where you’re not loving what you know your audience would love to read … might be worth checking in with yourself and seeing if it’s actually something you want to be writing about at all.

The power of authenticity

Social media is just a highlight reel, right? There is a lot of great stuff out there, but there’s also a lot of fakeness, and the world is seeing it.

When it comes to blogging, being your authentic self, showing and sharing your personality in you’re writing … everything becomes more enjoyable when you’re writing and sharing like yourself. And your readers pick up on that right? It’s like I’m inviting you in for a cuppa and a chat. Hopefully.

👉🏻 Check out this post for more tips on this one: How to Write with More Confidence

Blogging has changed a lot

The four bloggers I interviewed for The Blogging Room ranged from someone who had more recently started their blog, and someone who has been blogging for years and years. The other two were somewhere in the middle, but they said the same thing I’ll say too: blogging has changed.

But guess what? That’s a good thing. While social media may sometimes feel like a noisy house where everyone’s talking over each other (anyone else have dinner tables like that? 🤣✋🏻 my poor mother), blogs are absolutely a bit of a break from the chaos.

Lately, as bloggers, we’ve noticed more people returning to commenting on our blog posts and hitting ‘reply’ on emails, … hopefully showing that readers are moving toward hanging out on blog more. They’re not letting go of social media, but they’re also recognising that there are other options out there.

So! That’s what I learnt and what I was reminded of when I interviewed bloggers this year. I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments on these 6 things!

Drop a comment and share something that you’ve learnt this year with your blog, or that you’ve recognised in the changes.