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AI is hungry. And it can’t cook.
Large language models need constant feeding—fresh data, real experiences, genuine expertise.
They’re probability machines, not quality judges.
They aggregate patterns but can’t evaluate truth.
When someone asks for “the best razor under £10,” the AI has no way to actually test razors. It has to find sources that did.
That’s the opening. Brands need their products and services to be written about, talked about, reviewed and featured.
For years, the SEO industry churned out content nobody needed, written by people with no experience in the subject, ranking through technical manipulation rather than genuine value.
Google’s Helpful Content Update was the reckoning—but the damage was already done. Trust in online content collapsed.
Now AI sits in the search results, answering questions before you ever reach a website. Traditional traffic channels are dying.
But there is hope.
Enter the brand blog: written content from experienced practitioners, giving away earned knowledge, building audiences that search for them by name.
Not content farms. Not corporate marketing departments. Real voices with real stakes.
And in this article I explain how to jump into blogging…fast.
Here’s what the newsletter platforms won’t tell you: they need you more than you need them.
Substack and Medium promise discovery. LinkedIn newsletters promise reach.
But every one of these platforms is algorithmically driven—optimised for what works for the crowd, not what interests your specific audience.
Try writing something niche on Medium. Something genuinely useful to a small but valuable audience. Watch it sink without a trace while generic productivity advice gets boosted to the front page.
The platforms want engagement. They want you writing for their algorithm, not your readers. And the moment you stop playing their game, your reach disappears.
I used to yearn for the days when Neil Patel’s Quick Sprout published case studies. When Backlinko dropped a new guide and you’d block out an hour to absorb it. Those blogs built audiences through genuine value—not algorithmic manipulation.
That era is gone. But something better might be emerging.
The market is already pricing this in.
Glen Allsopp spent years building Detailed.com—a blog sharing deep dives on SEO and digital marketing. Ahrefs acquired it. Not for the links. For the voice and audience.
Exploding Topics, a trend-spotting blog with a software layer, was acquired by SEMrush. Third Door Media, the company behind Search Engine Land and MarTech—also SEMrush.
Then there’s Every.to.
What started as a writing collective now builds tools like Spiral and runs a thriving subscription business.
And there’s Starter Story. A blog that turned founder interviews into courses, a YouTube channel, and a paid community.
The pattern: quality blogs compound into business ecosystems. And smart acquirers are paying attention.
Because building blogs = gaining attention.
Here’s the bit most marketers don’t want to hear: blogging is valuable precisely because it’s hard again.
When there’s no algorithm to game, when you can’t buy your way to visibility, publishing consistently becomes a fitness signal. It proves you have something to say. It proves you’ll do the work. And it filters out everyone who only showed up when traffic was cheap.
No startup costs beyond hosting and a theme. No gatekeepers. No approval process.
Just you, your expertise, and your willingness to show up.
The difficulty is the feature, not the bug.
Anyone can post on LinkedIn. Building an audience that actively searches for your blog? That takes years of earned trust.
Two kinds of speed matter now:
Creation speed. Voice typing and AI assistance let you move from idea to 1,500 polished words in under an hour. Daily publishing becomes possible for anyone with genuine expertise. The bottleneck isn’t production—it’s having something worth saying.
This changes everything. You can now write at the frequency needed to build an audience without burning out or hiring a content team. The tools have caught up to the ambition.
Consumption speed. I see a 30-minute YouTube video and immediately want the transcript. Written content lets time-poor audiences scan, extract, and decide. Video makes them wait.
I often take YouTube transcripts and drop them into Gemini just to read faster. I want to consume information at speed, then decide if the video is worth watching in full. The written word wins for efficiency.
That’s not nostalgia—it’s reality. Writing matters.
OK…you’re sold, but what’s the best way to do this?
If you’re building in 2026, here’s the system that works.
Your moat is what you’ve done. Share test results, case studies, tactical specifics. No research regurgitation—anyone with AI can do that now.
The question to ask: what have I actually done that others haven’t?
Document the campaigns you’ve run. The experiments that failed. The frameworks you’ve stress-tested against reality.
Give readers the specifics they can’t generate themselves: numbers, timelines, screenshots, lessons learned the hard way.
This is content that requires lived experience. That’s what makes it defensible.
The blogs getting acquired—Detailed, Exploding Topics, Starter Story—share one trait: they’re written by practitioners documenting what they or others are doing.
They are providing new information.
Even if this information is collected from others, or spotting patterns in data that is there for all to see if they looked hard enough.
It’s new.
The blog won’t grow itself. Build email lists, communities, and social presence before you expect discovery. The promotion is the hard part.
Build the distribution muscle. Grow a presence on LinkedIn or X. Start an email list with nothing to send yet. Build a community on Discord or Slack. Create your blog and share it to an audience of one.
Marketing a blog in 2026 means showing up where people already gather. Comment on posts in your space. Collaborate with other creators. Build relationships before you need them.
Nobody stumbles upon your blog through search anymore. You have to bring the audience yourself. Accept that now.
The blog is headquarters. Turn posts into YouTube scripts. Syndicate to Medium, Substack. Everything else is distribution channels feeding back to the asset you own.
Once you’ve published a post, repurpose it everywhere. That article becomes a YouTube video. A LinkedIn carousel. A thread on X. A Medium republication. A Substack issue.
This is how Every.to operates. This is how Starter Story scaled. The blog captures the email. The email builds the relationship. The relationship enables everything else—courses, consulting, products, community.
You can post on LinkedIn, but LinkedIn owns that reach. You can publish on Medium, but Medium controls the algorithm. The blog is yours. The email list is yours. Build the asset you actually own, then use the platforms as distribution.
Consulting, courses, software, paid communities, partnerships. Not display ads. The audience is the asset—and a loyal audience monetises far better than a large, disengaged one.
Display advertising is a race to the bottom. You need millions of pageviews to make meaningful revenue. That game is over.
The new model: monetise through depth, not scale.
Here’s what depth monetisation looks like:
A smaller, engaged audience is worth far more than a massive, disengaged one.
Forget generic keywords. Your goal is a name people type directly into the search bar.
Become a destination. When someone searches ” John Smith marketing blog” instead of “marketing advice,” you’ve won. No algorithm can take that from you. No platform can gatekeep your brand.
How do you get there? Consistency. A distinct point of view. Willingness to share what others won’t. Being known for something specific.
The blogs that matter in 2026 won’t rank for generic terms. They’ll be searched for by name because they’ve earned trust over years of showing up.
The economics of blogging have inverted.
Old model: chase millions of pageviews, sell display advertising, make pennies per visitor, pray for scale.
New model: build a smaller but engaged audience, monetise through multiple streams. Product mentions and affiliate partnerships. Consulting and services. Tools and software. Information products and courses. Paid communities.
As long as you’re getting searched for—as long as people actively seek out your blog—you can build a business. The audience doesn’t need to be massive. It needs to be earned.
Don’t get carried away. This isn’t easy.
No algorithm will boost you. Marketing the blog is harder than writing it. Building community takes years.
But the platforms that promised free reach—Google, social media, even algorithmic newsletter platforms—are gatekeeping harder than ever. Substack and Medium want you to write for their crowd, not yours. LinkedIn newsletters chase engagement, not depth.
The only asset they can’t take: an audience that searches for you by name.
I’ve been blogging for years. Built properties for clients and for myself. Watched SEO traffic rise and collapse.
The blog is dead? Not a chance.
The era of easy traffic is dead. The era of earned audiences is just beginning.
That’s your aim.
Thanks for reading, and please follow me for more articles.
Andrew Holland
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