If you run a blog for your business, you may think that keeping it updated it’s one of the less important things you do, somewhere behind offering a great product, high quality service, and a fulfilling work environment. What too many companies don’t realize, however, is that you can’t provide that fantastic product and quality service to the broadest audience if your blog lies fallow. Rather, a well maintained blog is another component of your customer service as well as a key marketing tool for presenting both your product and business philosophy.
Maintaining your blog takes work, but you’ll find the rewards to be greater than you expected. Here are 3 key tips for keeping your blog supplied with quality content – you’ll be surprised at the response you receive.
Schedules Matter
If nothing else, putting your blog on a schedule will provide the structure you need to keep it regularly updated, but it should do more than that. By scheduling blog posts regularly – at the same time of day even, if possible – you help build a relationship with readers. When readers know to expect a post, they’ll swing by the blog to check in. Blogs with regular updates almost always outrank irregularly updated ones on readership statistics.
Consistency is more important than frequency overall. Once a week is plenty if that’s all you can manage, as long as you stick to that calendar.
Have Backup Content
Even if you write an editorial calendar for your blog – a very handy tool – there will be times when pressing deadlines within the company may prevent you or other staff from writing a new post. That’s why it can be helpful to create a few extra posts that can be put on hold for situations like this and keep a reminder note about this content somewhere you’ll remember.
Any backup content will need to be evergreen so that it isn’t out of date if you keep it as backup for a few weeks or months, but evergreen content has its own value in the bigger blogging scheme, so this can be a beneficial feature. And if the post does seem to be going out of date, plug it into the upcoming editorial calendar. Your editorial calendar is kind of like the work order tracking tool for your blog – it keeps you up to date on what content is coming up, who needs to write it, and whether it’s ready to post. Backup content isn’t on the calendar, but it can help fill gaps when necessary.
Keep It Brief
Short blog posts are good both for you and for you readers. People like to be able to skim web content, so keep posts brief and paragraphs shorter than you would typically make them. Readers will catch more of the content this way. You’ll have to be economical with your words, but that’s a good skill to have in the business world. Blogs are longer than a pitch, but they should be short enough not to lose readers hundreds of words from the end. (Hint: that’s because your posts only need to be a few hundred words to begin with!)
These tips may seem simple, but they’re high impact – you’ll improve your web rankings, gain readership, and even increase sales by running a consistent blog. Blogging matters in today’s marketplace, so make sure it’s part of your business model.
Originally posted on June 6, 2016 @ 6:06 am