Blog #300 – What We’ve Learned

Yay! This is our 300th blog post! I've been editor of this blog since the beginning, so I figured this was a good chance to go back and take a look we've learned in that time about how to write a good blog for business. Here's a few gems, some learned the hard way, some dropped in our lap for immediate blog beautification.

Consistency. Consistency. Consistency. Did I mention you need to post consistently? The first few years of this blog (it started in 2006) were spotty at best. We'd get it rolling then months would go by with nothing. Then we'd get it rolling again and let slack off again. Now, for the last few years, we've been pretty consistent – posting 3 posts a week, with our "Ad of the Week" feature coming out on Wednesday. Traffic has trended upward steadily during this time.

Of course, as I say this, we're coming off an incredibly busy few weeks here at Yaffe where we were working crazy hours. During these weeks, we only posted once. In blog world, it doesn't take long for a lack of consitency to hit. Before those two weeks, we were riding on an all-time high in terms of page views per day. The last 4 days, we dropped to less than half of that traffic. You have to set expectations up and then meet them. Any slacking will hurt you.

Focus Your Content.Another wrong thing we did at first was to be all over the place. We figured we had to have a blog and didn't really strategize how to use it. We wanted everyone at the agency to be involved and had people take turns, whether they were good writers or not. And we let them write on whatever. We had posts that were recipes, posts about family holidays, a post that was really just a bad riddle… you get the idea.

Now we focus on things our clients and potential clients would be interested in. The purpose of creating content is to be helpful and in the process show your expertise and build thought leadership. Now our posts are about marketing, advertising, branding, corporate culture, social media, mobile, digital… all things we do and have expertise in.

Have Good Writers Do The Writing. As I mentioned above, we used to have everyone write, sometimes without complete willingness. Now, we have a team in-house that are all good at writing in general, and at writing blogs specifically. Rather than making the rest of the staff pitch in, we often bring in guest bloggers who have a specific expertise. This improves both your content and what your audience can get out of reading the blog.

Once you start writing a blog on a consistent basis, it gets in your blood. I know from personal experience, if it's been a little too long since I wrote a post, I actually get a little on edge about it. It's not just knowing we need to have something out there; it's a need to actually write and make the connection that a blog creates. I look forward to the next 300, which should come much faster than the first 300. I hope you'll join us on the journey and add your thoughts along the way.

Are you a blogger or just a blog reader? What have you learned in your time spent with blogs? How has it impacted your life and how you do business?

Mike McClure, Editor, Yaffe Tidbits