This is the second in a series of articles about business blogging. The foundation of any successful inbound marketing program is remarkable content. It’s the reason why people will pay attention to you and the motivation to hand over their email address and opt into your messages. Downloadable content is certainly an important part of a content marketing strategy but blogging is its lifeblood. The data is irrefutable; more blogging equals more quality traffic and higher conversion rates.
Planning
After figuring out your blogging goals and how you’re going to measure them, it’s time to start planning out your posts. The number one question I’m asked by people is, “How often should I blog?” The answer is this: As often as you can realistically commit to doing consistently. It’s really important to be realistic about this and not underestimate the amount of time this will take.
For planning purposes, you can probably figure on around an hour per blog post. Some people are really proficient writers and can easily crank out a 600-word post in 30 minutes. Others might take 90 minutes or more. If you’re unsure, it probably wouldn’t hurt to test this out and time yourself before settling on a figure.
Quantity
The more you blog, the more traffic and leads you will get. It’s as simple as that. Hubspot’s marketing benchmark report also showed the impact that the number of monthly blog articles can have on inbound leads. Companies with 51 to 100 pages on their websites generated 48% more traffic than companies with 1 to 50 pages.
Image courtesy of Hubspot’s “Marketing Benchmarks from 7,000+ Businesses“
Cranking out a blog post every day is a great goal and would really super-charge almost any inbound marketing effort. However, that’s an awful lot of work and requires a tremendous amount of discipline. It’s important to note that writing the posts isn’t the only time-sink. You need to be doing research and collecting the raw materials for your posts. This takes time, too. Be sure to take this all into account before setting a target.
Consistency
One of the first bits of advice I give anyone considering starting a blog is that “It is more important to be consistent than prolific.” I can’t tell you how many blogs I visit that had three posts per week for two months and then nothing for another year. What impression does that give you about the company? The best case is that you think that they didn’t plan carefully enough and either didn’t have the right resources in place or else eliminated the job position that was managing their content. But the worst case is that they’re in some sort of trouble and can’t dedicate those resources anymore. Either way, it doesn’t reflect well.
It’s important to set expectations and then try – as much as possible – to meet those expectations. After a careful assessment of your resources, commit to a realistic blogging schedule. Those companies I mentioned would have been better off posting one blog per week for six months and using that cushion to keep filling the hopper with new content so they’re not under the gun.
So how do you set expectations? When you launch a blog, make sure that you have enough posts “in the can” to establish a pattern. For example, if you’re going to post monthly, go live with three months’ worth of backdated posts. If you’re going post weekly, have three or four weeks’ worth. If you’re going to post daily, have at least five days’ worth. This way, when people visit your blog they will have an intuitive expectation of future posting based on the history.
Variety
Another question I get frequently is, “How long should my blog posts be?” My answer to this question is similar to the one you’d receive if you asked your doctor what kinds of foods you should eat; a healthy variety. Some years ago, I read a blog post that used a great analogy but I can’t recall who wrote it. They compared blog posts to meals. You have breakfasts that are your designed to wake up your blog and create energy. There are between-meals snacks that can be quickly digested but very satisfying. Then there are the lunches that are frequently social events where you sit down with a group of your colleagues. And finally, there’s dinner; the meat and potatoes of your blog.
When talk about variety, I’m referring to two different aspects. One is the length of the post. In some cases, a post may be just a couple of sentences with an embedded video or infographic. Others may be much longer; 1,000 words or more. Another aspect is the tone of the post. Some may be serious and informative while others are whimsical or thought provoking. If all of your blog posts are 600 words and serious in tone, people may get bored. Changing things up keeps it interesting.
Read the next post in the series: Preparation
