Jameson LaMarca
So, how’s your blog going? Are you complaining about having to write your blog? Have you noticed that what started out as a “once a day” endeavor has become a tedious chore and you only post when you feel like it?
We’ve all been there, so welcome to the club! We wouldn’t say it’s a prestigious club, mind you, but there are certainly a lot of members. Most people who consistently write professionally or for a hobby get fatigued from time to time.
All joking aside, if your blog has become a bore and you’re posting less frequently, it could be hurting your content strategy. By consistently updating your blog, you’re staying relevant to your audience, engaging with new customers, educating on new products, and constantly feeding the search engine Beast (see what we did there?).
If you’ve fallen out of love with your blog, here are 3 ways to help you get your relationship back on the right track:
1. Reuse, Recycle, and Repurpose
Be willing to experiment. If your blog was only written posts, try adding images, memes, or video for a little flavor. Connect your social media accounts and post relevant content when it’s appropriate. If your blog is done through the user-friendly and increasingly-popular Tumblr, connect it to Instagram and repurpose your pictures. It minimizes time invested, but you’re still contributing material. You can also take older, evergreen posts and re-post them. If the article works as is, add a short introduction that addresses the relevance of the older post for context or take the core concept and change it a bit to make it more timely. Again, this will cut down on some of the work needed, but you’re still posting new content for your audience.
2. Shift Focus
My first blog was nothing more than an inside joke between a friend and I. We wrote incredibly stupid stories about things we saw online or we’d recap the events of the weekend. We circulated it around to our other friends solely to amuse them and ourselves. And then, I accidentally deleted it. Don’t ask me how I did it, but I did. At first, we were both upset, but we soon realized this clean slate offered us the chance to actually make the blog about something, in this case: food (specifically burgers). What’s the point of this little story? It’s certainly not to delete your blog and start over. I repeat: do not delete your blog and start from scratch. Instead, think about your original goals and the type of content you’re posting then adjust its focus without shifting the message. For example, if you were writing a lot of text-heavy posts on your products themselves, try doing a series of pieces that talk about company culture with a few accompanying (and appropriate) pictures from a holiday event or a short bio highlighting a new hire.
3. ABP: Always Be Posting
Writing a blog is like going to the gym: you start taking one or two days off and before you know it OH MY GOD IS THAT A DONUT? Just like you don’t need to be doing a thousand reps every time you go to the gym, you need not write 1,500 word thought pieces every time you post (though longer pieces are good for SEO). Short, relevant pieces are great so long as they stay true to your brand and style. Set a million alarms, lock yourself in your favorite writing happy place, do whatever it is you have to do to start writing regularly again and build yourself back up. It comes down to one word: discipline.
Your blog can be an effective way to showcase your brand, agency, or product, but the seemingly daunting task of sitting down to write can derail its momentum. By varying the types of content and subject matter, you can freshen it up while maintaining the same voice and tone. In a time where content comes in a variety of forms and advertising is as scrutinized and distrusted as ever, an honest, authentic blog can help keep your audience’s attention.
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