Blog Tipz

The new year is fast approaching, and this means that it is a better time than ever to start a new blog. While some could say that there won’t be any new niches to fill, I have to say otherwise, as there may be some new trends emerging over the next year.

Growth by indajazz

What this list aims to do is to inspire you to create a new blog in the new year, as I look at some of the popular trends that have continued to grow within the past year.

The Technology/Real-Time Niche

2009 was a big year for technology and social media. Twitter erupted, everyone is now using the service, and Google now has real-time search results. What more real-time could we see in 2010? Who knows at this point. However, we do know that it is here to stay, and it will continue to evolve even more so than this year.

Additionally, people want to be informed about new technology and inventions as they are released. This is a niche that drives a lot of traffic and really isn’t going anywhere. The niche is one of the most saturated, but we can always see a new face to it.

How-To Blogs

Often considered a part of the technology field, how-to and tutorial blogs will continue to remain in-demand. With new products coming out and more advances, searches for these terms will continue to remain hot in the upcoming year.

Video will become an ever-increasing part of these tutorials, and podcasts will continue growing in popularity, especially those that focus on video.

Truly Unique Posts/Content

IF you are using a standard post format today, look for that to evolve (and you better evolve with it) in the upcoming year. More bloggers will embrace an “expanded” post format, akin to that of magazines. I won’t go as far as saying that the overall style will be too much like it, but the format of it and what is included.

These posts will help draw in more expanded bursts of traffic, rather than the current bursts which might only last a few hours. However, due to the nature of these posts, the authors will focus on getting one or two published per week, compared to five or more.

Less Social, More Private

Twitter and Facebook have recently been trying to cut out the noise that is found within the social networks. When you are able to deliver a more focused and refined experience, the users win, as they don’t have to sort through all the spam tweets and updates. With private Twitter lists and Facebook profiles, it’ll be possible to develop closer networks with your friends and followers.

A Faster Web

If Google, the behemoth monster that rules the web, gets its way, we could be looking at a lot of sites losing their ranking positions due to “slow” load times. Pay attention to this, as the company could be making major strides towards this sometime in 2010.

It might not matter to you as much if you can afford the faster server, but for the rest of the bloggers, it might mean drops in search engine rankings, as well as lost visitors, as more sites will be loading faster – well under two seconds.

Other Developing and Trending Niches

There is still a lot of growth being seen within the environmental niche and several other niches. The key in the game is how fast you can get the content to the consumer. Good content will still exist, but the content that gets out first will generally win the game.

These have been just a few few of my predictions for the web and the blogging space in 2010. There are certainly other trends that I have skipped over, as they don’t apply to blogging, but can also be explored if you are interested in them.