Tag Archives: Blog Content

Is most blogging waste of time?

At least the title of this article seems to say so. Actually you can say the same with content marketing: is content marketing waste of time?

Okay, I’m going into a loop – is most driving waste of time? Is most reading waste of time? Is most physical work waste of time? Is most studying waste of time?

I personally believe that an activity is rarely a waste of time. The thing that decides whether it’s a waste of time or not is the end result that you achieve. Whether a particular business promotion activity (for that matter, even an enterprise) bears results or not depends on its implementation, execution and targeting. The same is the case with blogging, whether you indulge in personal blogging or business blogging.

There are many businesses that are doing great with the help of their blog. Most of my business comes due to blogging. Yes, it is time consuming and I would rather have an activity that gets me targeted traffic without having to blog every day, but for now, blogging gets the business. The more I blog, the more business I get, the less I blog, the less business I get.

I have observed that with more blogging I get more targeted traffic. It’s not that my clients give me more business because they can see me blogging everyday. It’s because my visibility increases and more people come to know of my services whether my search engine rankings are improving, new blog posts and webpages are continuously being added to the search engine index or more people are having more content from me to share on social media and social networking websites. Whatever is the case, ultimately, I experience an improvement when a blog more. So at a personal level I can never say that blogging is waste of time.

In a blog post titled Why every business should blog Neil Patel shares the following statistics regarding business blogging:

61% of consumers have made a purchase based on a blog post that they read.
60% of consumers feel positive about a company after reading its blog.
70% consumers learn about a company through its blog vs ads.

According to an infographic shared on the same page, websites that blog have 97% more inbound links. Websites that regularly blog have 434% more indexed pages compared to websites that don’t.

Is blogging good for your business? It depends on your targeting, your intention, and your seriousness. Please don’t think that I’m trying to preach, but most business blogging ventures fail because people are not persistent. The problem is not with blogging, the problem is with commitment. Business blogging requires serious commitment, whether it comes directly from you (you writing the blog regularly) or it comes from someone you have hired. Persistence is the key.

What’s better, longer or shorter blog posts?

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There was a brief exchange somewhere between two prominent bloggers whether it’s better to publish longer blog posts (1000-2000 words) or shorter (300-500 words). What do I advise to my clients?

Once again, what I normally do, I say it depends on the topic, or the need of the hour. I favor both long and short blog posts.

In fact length doesn’t really matter, as long as you know what you are writing, and how much detail is apt for your audience. What’s important is regularity and relevance.

Case for longer blog posts

Longer blog posts are good if you are publishing an analytical piece that has lots of information, lots of sections and subsections. It can be a detailed report on something. It can be some account of an event that happened at your workplace, or at a conference. It can be a detailed research. Such posts can be highly useful and they have a greater chance of going viral. Since they pack lots of highly useful information they also enjoy better search engine rankings.

Case for shorter blog posts

Shorter blog posts are easier to write and publish. You don’t have to make lots of effort. You can publish shorter blog posts with greater frequency. Besides, quickly publishing a couple of paragraphs is better than having no content simply because you don’t have enough time to create longer, more comprehensive blog posts.

Eventually, what matters is having lots of relevant content on a regular basis. Keep in mind that the fundamental purpose of creating content on your website or blog is keeping your visitors informed as much as possible.

With what frequency should you publish your blog

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People often wonder how many times they should post on their blogs in order to create a successful presence. There is no set rule. It depends on what you are actually trying to achieve through your blog. If your blog is new it is better to publish daily and sometimes (again, it depends on what you’re trying to achieve) even multiple times in a day because this may get your blog indexed by various search engines quickly. Once I published on a particular blog 4 blog posts every day and sometimes even 10 and its links started appearing on the first page within two weeks.

Quick publication can be counterproductive too if you write only on a particular topic because your readers may not have enough time to go through so many blog posts on a daily basis unless they’re solving some purpose. In such cases, you are fine with just one blog post every day.

Although publishing everyday may not be very crucial for your website/blog it can help you build your content fast and attain visibility, and consequently, recognition for publishing high-value content on a regular basis. People remember you better when they see or read something from you every day.

If you are simply gathering content under your website/blog you can post on alternative days or with whatever frequency that suits you (or your budget if you’re getting your blog posts written by a content writer). Some of my clients go with just one blog post every week and recently I started writing for a client who wants one blog post every second week.

Benefits of publishing regularly

There are many benefits of publishing blog posts regularly:

You build keyword-rich content faster

The more you write the more keywords and key phrases you cover with your content. As you keep on adding new blog posts to your blog the search engines gather and organize your links and then rank them according to their keyword relevance. Blogging everyday is the fastest way of getting good search engine rankings.

Better social media and networking exposure

Social media and networking is about rampant activity. Something is always going on and everybody is vying for attention, whether organizations or individuals. Hence it is very easy to forget names and brands. If you post every day it gives new fodder to your followers and friends. You encourage them to reach out to you and share their opinion. You constantly engage them and give them a reason to visit your blog daily.

It establishes you as an expert and an authority

I don’t mean to say that if you publish everyday and even if you’re publishing trash you become an authority in your field — no it doesn’t work this way. But it helps if you’re content is of high-value and frequent. Visit Seth Godin’s blog and you will notice that he gives remarkable advise without missing even a single day. Although I haven’t personally checked it people say that he posts even on Christmas. He is known for his great advice and he is also known in the blogging world for not missing even a single day of posting. Besides, sharing knowledge makes you more knowledgeable too as each time you publish something related to your profession you need to study and come up with valuable, usable information.

Aside from these benefits, again, it depends on what you are trying to gain through your blog. More than frequency what matters is quality. Even if you publish one blog post every month make sure that it is high-quality because eventually that is what gets you recognition from people as well as search engines.

Blog success has got a lot to do with persistence

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Blogging — whether business or personal — is an ongoing activity. It’s not like you publish 20-40 blog posts and there you go, you have got a successful blog for yourself. No, it doesn’t work this way. The nature of blogging is such that it goes on and on.

I have noticed that many clients put an upper limit to the number of blog posts they need due to financial or other (mainly financial) reasons. Although they may slightly end up improving their search engine rankings due to the way blog titles are formulated, it is a very restrictive approach and to be frank they are wasting money in two ways:

They are losing money on those 20-40 blog posts because on their own they cannot do much for the clients

They are losing money by not continuing because persistent blogging is one of the strongest promotional tools they could have had for their business.

Do I tell this to my clients? Depends upon how receptive they are to my suggestion. They normally feel — it is but natural — that I am seeking a long-lasting business opportunity for myself. Of course, if they continue publishing content on their blogs (provided by me) I continue to get paid and for them it is an ongoing expense. But they fail to understand that they are incurring a far greater expense in order to avoid a smaller but significant expense. They missed the opportunity they could have had by persistent blogging.

But why do you need to publish content on your blog on an ongoing basis? Because this is the nature of blogging. You continuously publish content so that the search engines always have something new to crawl and index from your website. With every single new post you are improving your search engine rankings whether you can directly see that or not.

With new content you also give your visitors a reason to come to your website/blog repeatedly. It is repeat visiting that eventually gets you business.

Ongoing content publishing also helps you maintain the buzz around your brand/business over social media and networking websites. You routinely have something new to post there and your friends and followers can see that you proactively communicate through your website and share lots of information with your visitors.

There is another thing that should prompt you to publish content on your blog regularly and that is your competitors are doing it. Managing an online business is no longer about having a website and 5-10 customary webpages. You always need to be proactive and aggressive in your approach simply because there are so many people trying to grab business and they are constantly coming up with new things in order to beat you. The strongest weapon in their arsenal is of course content marketing. Targeted content gives an immense boost to search engine rankings for relevant keywords and longtail expressions. They are constantly feeding the search engines and the social media and networking websites with high quality and compelling content. In other words they are promoting themselves aggressively.

There was a time when some businesses had telephones and some didn’t. It was the same with fax machines and the same with websites: some had them and some didn’t. than people realized not having a website was a big drawback. the same phenomena is taking place when it comes to publishing content on blogs. There are many who understand that it is an ongoing exercise and then there are those who consider blog posts as normal webpages. blogging, once started is just like another recurring expense, and those who understand this have a great advantage over those who don’t.

But what if you don’t have a budget that can support ongoing blogging? Well, when I say that you have to publish content persistently it doesn’t mean you have to publish blog posts daily. Even 2 blog posts per week can fetch you great benefits. Of course daily blogging has its own advantages but if right now you cannot afford it you can go on publishing on your blog by scheduling 2 blog posts or even 1 block post per week. It’s just that the search engines and your visitors/followers/friends must always have something new to view and promote about your business — directly or indirectly.

How to get new blogging ideas regularly

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Publishing a regular blog is a great way of attracting new visitors to your website, from search engines, other blogs, online forums and social networking websites. But it’s not easy to get new blogging ideas on an ongoing basis. I’ve personally observed that when I ask my clients to send me blog post titles they run out of them after 20-25 blog posts. On the other hand if I find the topics the projects sustain for long durations. For instance there are around 3 blogs that allow me to send my own blog topics (plus content) and I’ve been supplying blogs to them for more than 2 years now.

Considering the overwhelming benefits of publishing a blog, how do you make sure that you always have something to post. Here’s a blog post that discusses 13 ideas to inspire your blog content. Briefly, they are:

Using Google alerts
Going through blog directories for ideas
Subscribing (email updates and RSS feeds) to blogs of your interest
Linking to blog posts from other blogs (like this one)
Conduct polls (relevant to your blog topic) and discuss the results
Write about interesting things in your own life (don’t over-do this, of course)
Find interesting topics/debates and share them with your readers
Create blog posts out of the sub-topics of other blog posts
Ask your community for fresh ideas using your comment section and Twitter and FaceBook accounts
Invite other bloggers to write guest blog posts for your blog
Scan for ideas in newspapers, magazines, online forums and other websites
Write lists…this is a fad on the Internet, like, top 10 free content management systems, for instance
Get ideas from the classical literature.

You can read about these topics in detail on the link mentioned above.