I stumbled across the news today that the long standing wedding blog Style Me Pretty is officially closing their doors. Style Me Pretty was one of the very first blogs I started reading, way back right after they launched, and hearing that they are closing is a weird and bittersweet feeling.
Back in the time of Google Reader [man I miss Google Reader] I would check for new posts everyday, following Style Me Pretty alongside Pioneer Woman, Moosh in Indy and the Bloggess. Looking back, its crazy to realize that when I started reading blogs Pioneer Woman’s youngest was just barely a toddler and now they are all in high school or college…
Over the years, due to changes in time, life and just a lack of interest I stopped reading as many blogs but I always keep a bunch in my Feedly reader to check out when I have some down time. My favorites are the same even though I’m long past the usefulness of finding wedding planning information interesting. I like the pictures and the pretty dresses and pretending to attend some strangers perfectly styled wedding shoot (because if we are honest, very few weddings actually look like that).
Knowing how my behavior is with regards to blogs, I shouldn’t be surprised that Style Me Pretty has gone by the wayside. They were acquired awhile back and content has slowly begun to look like the churning wedding machine.
Looking at what I can tell from the search engine reporting tools I use, it looks like their search volume has dipped a lot, making it nearly impossible for them to accurately be receiving the volume of traffic their media kit portrays. I’d imagine this is something that their advertisers felt first hand and slowly spiraled out of control until the website was no longer profitable.
I’ve heard from a ton of bloggers that with the changes to Facebook brand pages, their blog traffic has taken a huge hit and more and more people are turning to SEO to continue to drive traffic.
When a site like Style Me Pretty, owned by a big media conglomerate, has to close their doors, what does that mean about how people are consuming information? Are blogs and media websites primed for failure or will there always be an audience of people who want to read them?
Personally I read more daily newsletters [The Hustle, The Skimm, and Business Insider] than blogs and I assume I consume A LOT of media in comparison to the average person. There’s so much buzz about who to trust, what is real news vs. fake news, real followers vs. bots and the impact social media has on website traffic that it’s hard to understand what real consumer behavior looks like.
Are we becoming a society of people who prefer a well timed instagram post or a 30 second sped up video over a full blog post? What do you think?
Photo by Anne Edgar on Unsplash
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