“You’re not writing another one of your silly Blog articles, are you?”
Old Bert had just popped his head round the door of my office to deliver his usual supportive words of encouragement for my online scribblings.
“Why on Earth would you want to do that? Complete waste of time!” he continued.
“Anyway, don’t mind me, I’m off to do something useful.”
With that, he disappeared off down the corridor on his way to water the plastic flowers, shaking his head in disapproval.
In fairness to Old Bert, he may have had a point on this particular occasion.
At the time, I was about halfway through writing an intensively researched article on the long and fascinating secret history of the paperclip.
I was just getting to the really interesting bit about the Norwegian inventor’s battle for a design patent in 1899, when it suddenly dawned on me that I may have misjudged my audience demographic. Quite badly.
(However, if anybody is out there is interested in reading the full article, then please do let me know, and I’ll come round to your house and recite the whole thing in person.)
Even though I’ve now thankfully decided to change course and write a Blog article about, erm, Blogging, I couldn’t help wondering if Old Bert may have had a point.
Considering the amount of effort and dedication it takes to regularly update a Business Blog (honestly! I’m literally sweating with exhaustion as I write this!), does it really have any significant impact on your website traffic?
And just how often are we supposed to find the time to update them anyway?
Well, a new report from HubSpot suggests that regular Blogging could prove to be much more powerful than you might imagine, as long as you keep dishing up that fresh content.
But exactly how and why are the Business Bloggers pulling in such terrific results?
Starting up a Blog is one of those concepts that many Small Business owners approach with the very best of intentions…but due to a whole variety of reasons, the idea can fall flat very quickly.
A quick search in Cyberspace will reveal thousands of Blogs that look something like this;
23rd January 2007
Welcome to my brand new Blog! I intend to update this Blog every single day, so make sure that you check in regularly to keep yourself in the loop! This is going to be great!
15th March 2012
Yeah…so it looks as if it’s been quite a while since my Blog entry…
Of course, it can be incredibly difficult to keep up the enthusiasm or even just find the time in your working schedule to stick to such a big commitment.
Whilst I’m happy to report that the Martin Print Blog has been regularly updated for well over a year now, I have to confess that this is only because Doris is under very strict instructions not to let me anywhere near the coffee machine until I’ve finished my latest article.
It works for me. You might well find a better system…
But just how effective is a regularly updated Blog anyway? Can all these little words and sentences really spell out success?
HubSpot recently collected data from over 7,000 businesses, and found that regular Blogging does indeed seem to pull in a bigger online audience.
The HubSpot Report reveals that, on average, Businesses choosing to Blog between 9-15 times per month generate three times more traffic than those Businesses that choose not to run a Blog.
Taking this one step further, Businesses that publish 15 or more new Blog posts per month are shown to generate an average of five times more online traffic than businesses that don’t bother to Blog at all.
But it’s not all about the visiting traffic.
Businesses that have published more than 200 Blog posts generate an average of five times more leads than those with less than 10 Blog posts.
The report also suggests that Small Businesses experience a much bigger ‘lift’ from accumulated Blog content than the larger companies.
So updating your Blog with fresh content as often as possible certainly seems to pay off in the long term for the savvy entrepreneur.
But where exactly does this ‘lift’ in your online traffic and sales come from?
Well, each brand spanking new Blog post is essentially another brand spanking new in-road to your business.
You’re actually creating a precious new piece of content which is going to get indexed by the mighty search engines and perhaps even shared across Social Media and Business Networking channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
So cooking up as many of these powerful new content bombs as possible throughout the month is clearly going to attract an increasingly bigger crowd.
The more posts you make, the more attention-grabbing opportunities you’re stockpiling into your marketing depository.
(Assuming that you remember to link your Blog posts back to your website, of course. Oh, that reminds me! Get your easy online printing at Martin Print! Hmm. Try and make your own link a bit more subtle than that though…)
Another point to consider is that a Blog regularly updated with fresh new content is much more likely to retain the attention of a casual online visitor.
A new reader may well come across one of your well-crafted Blog posts and find the content to be thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding.
But they’re very unlikely to return for second helpings if they then discover that your Blog was last updated in 1997 and now appears to be just a neglected relic floating around in Cyberspace.
However, if they can clearly see that your riveting Blog is still frequently updated with new material, they might just decide to stick around in the future…
But it can obviously seem like a huge challenge to find the time and energy in your busy working day to keep committed to such a big ongoing project.
After all, writing so many original slices of new and interesting content throughout the month is not always going to seem like a top priority when you have a hectic business to run.
It could well be the case that maintaining a Business Blog is not going to be a suitable strategy for everyone. Some might even suggest that it’s a very acquired taste.
I’ll be taking a look at specific tips and pointers on actually creating the content very soon right here on the Martin Print Blog.
You might be intrigued to hear that I don’t always follow my own advice when it comes to writing new posts!
Come to think of it, I don’t always follow my own advice on anything at all…
But in the meantime, if it’s been quite a while since you last got round to updating your own Blog, then it’s certainly worth considering stepping up the frequency of your posts – even if only on a relatively small scale.
We’re not all going to find the time to produce over 15 new Blog articles every single month…but even just a few small extra steps can pay valuable dividends.
According to that HubSpot Report, businesses that simply increase their number of new Blog posts from 3-5 per month to 6-8 per month come very close to doubling their amount of monthly leads!
Another very tempting reason to put your virtual pen to virtual paper a little more often in the future…
But do you maintain your own Business Blog?
How often do you update it with fresh new content every month? Do you still find the time to keep it running, or has it been a long while since your last Post?
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