I closed my blog last year, after more than ten years of creating admittedly uneven quality content. The impetus for me was that I was getting relatively good traffic but engagement was non-existent. I came to the conclusion I wasn't really getting anything out of it anymore, as far as I could tell neither was anyone else, and general IT blogs are a dime a dozen.

Absolutely, attracting a blog audience has become harder. The collapse of Google Reader, followed by the rise of Youtube and social media has caused this. You just don't build an audience for a blog anymore. You build an audience for your social media channels instead, and your blog becomes part of the content you share. It's now a delivery platform only.

So the question becomes instead how to a) attract social subscribers and b) get your content shared. Your content needs to cut through a lot of noise to get noticed. With very few exceptions I would say the answers for most blogs would be

1) produce content regularly, like clockwork

2) specialize into something unique to attract core followers first, you can always broaden later

3) compete with the big guys either in quality or in click-bait generation

I wouldn't branch too far out as far as cross-posting to different social networks is concerned. Identify 1-3 platforms and really engage people on those. Don't just spew links into the void.