Confession time. I love this blog, but I don’t blog as often as I’d like. A few years ago, I made a surprising discovery that took a lot of the stress out of blogging for me.
I aimed to blog weekly in 2013, but I didn’t always do that, and in the last quarter of the year I had a crazy problem with my back and LOTS of things went out the window, not just my blogging schedule.
Life happens. We both know that. But I felt guilty about my Blog Neglect, and a failure, and a bit glum. 🙁 Do you ever feel like that about your blogging?
And then I happened to check my annual stats, and I saw that in December 2013 I had 10 times as many readers as for the same month in 2012. Ten times!! Imagine my shock! And it wasn’t just a spike, it was a consistent upward trajectory all year.
It didn’t exactly make me a member of the bloggerati 😉 , but it gave me a growing audience, and I love interacting with you all. (Thanks!)
How on earth did this happen in the midst of such a chaotic year??
I had a little think about it, and these are the 5 factors that I believe made the difference for me. See if they could help you too.
1. I actually WROTE some posts
Yes, this one sounds obvious, but it does have to be said. 🙂 Especially because, the previous year I’d written hardly any posts at all.
No, I didn’t write nearly as many as I’d have liked, but I did write a few. To be precise, I wrote *coughs, clears throat* 21 articles in the space of a year. (Ooh, how embarrassing to admit it in black and white! It’s not many, is it??)
2. I wrote to a standard rather than a schedule
I faced the fact that the Constant Content blogging model wasn’t going to work for me, and decided to try to build a body of work instead.
Before anyone gets confused and thinks I’m saying my articles are perfect, have you spotted the Deliberate Typo in today’s post?? 😉
No, they’re not perfect. But I did put a lot of time and effort into each one. I wanted every single post to be:
a. useful to people
b. reusable by me in the future, maybe in a book or a workshop or an ecourse
c. positive rather than negative for my own reputation as a writer/editor.
3. I chose evergreen topics
When I spend hours writing a piece, I don’t want it becoming stale tomorrow morning. So I’ve mostly written on topics that won’t go out of date.
I’ve got one article that’s been read thousands of times over several years. I had no idea that article would be so popular of course. I just wrote about something I had experience in, and which I thought might be useful to someone else. But I did choose a topic that I believed would have enduring relevance.
Even as I write this post, which refers to specific dates, I’m thinking of ways to make it still read OK in a year’s time–or possibly how I’ll come back and edit it later to make it suit.
4. I used Twitter to promote those older, still-useful posts
I used to tweet my new posts once, and that was it. Duh.
Then I came across a WordPress plugin called Revive Old Post (thank you Molly Greene for that tip!). I set it up to tweet just once a day, as I didn’t want my followers drowning in a deluge of links.
Since I installed that plugin, I’ve seen the traffic to those articles increase. As the Twitter traffic increases, it seems to catch Google’s attention too… and so the search engine traffic increases likewise.
5. I made friends and promoted other bloggers
I encountered other bloggers in my field, and made connections and friendships with some of them because of shared interests. I promoted their blogs via social media and they promoted mine too. (Thank you, if that’s you!)
Note that I didn’t do this as a “strategy”, it just happened organically as I pursued genuine interests and made a point of promoting blogs that I really thought were valuable. People can tell when you’re making friends with them in the hope of getting something in return!!
The takeaway?
Apparently, the Belinda Model of Blogging does have value, despite my gloomy expectations. Initially, my traffic came mostly via Twitter, but now it’s more from searches. I’m on the first or second page of Google for several very specific topics (the SEO boffins call those “long tail keywords”… little do they know I just wrote an article I thought might be interesting). My list of subscribers grows slowly but steadily.
I’m not recommending you ignore all that good advice to blog consistently. If you can manage it, all the evidence shows that it does make a powerful difference to growing a readership.
What I do want to say is that apparently it is possible to build an audience, even if you can’t blog as fast or as well as you’d like. Yes, it would grow faster if you blogged more often/more consistently or promoted more vigorously. But it can still grow, even as you try to fit blogging in around LIFE.
Be encouraged. Don’t give up. 🙂
What’s your experience with blogging?
Featured image via Bigstock/Denis Ka
Good points!
I heard tell that you are some kind of Twitter guru. Is that true? Can you send me some links to your Twitter blogs. Thanks
Don’t know that I’m a guru, Henry! However, I’ve written a few articles about Twitter. You can find them under the “How to Market a Book” tab above.
I want to Thank You for your suggestions. For me in such a short time, they have become priceless! My story begins with a novel that is difficult to market because I’m competing with America’s inundation of reality tv stars that our publishing world has deemed fit for US markets, which has obliterated the novice. Not surprisingly, I had to create my own following, a marketing platform because I was too much of a nobody for anyone to look at my manuscript.
Knowing nothing about blogging, I saved up and had a professional website created, which was the smartest thing that I’ve done. My website creator knew a lot about the correlation between google and blogging so their creation automatically helped with my low bounce back ratio, built in pictures, and keyword searches.
Initially, I set my blogs weekly with hootsuite to manage my new world of social media- I only had facebook before this. The pressure of a weekly blog with a full time carrer in medical, my volunteering and a terminally ill mother was too much and I began to throw up blogs that were unedited. Embarrassed, this is when I re-evaluated my strategy.
I changed it to bi-weekly with a more articulate product and shorter blogs that engaged my audience. Interestinly, I receive more hits now, for bi-weekly than I did for weekly posts. I also started getting fanmail as well as topic requests. However, I noticed that I was underutilizing Twitter with a majority coming from facebook. This is when I found your blog on google about Twitter.
Following your advice, I raised my Twitter followers by 30% and began a slow rise in hits from this Media mogel. I’m still experimenting with social media and continue to leave myself open and receptive to new ideas.
My novel is being looked at by an Indie publisher so cross fingers, feet, toes, eyes…lol. Although I’m still small, my blogs that are echoes of my novel have the highest users, sessions, and feedback so that’s been encouraging.
I wanted to take a moment to let you know how much I appreciate your blogging and suggestions because it has made a difference for me!
Jacqui, thanks so much for the encouraging feedback, and taking the time to write it. I totally agree with you about the need to have some sanity in our blogging schedules. I haven’t blogged since mid-December, due to LIFE (published my first novel, final illness of much-loved elderly dog, supporting my mother through medical procedures, etc). My traffic has remained fairly constant despite my “radio silence”.
I’m looking forward to getting back into the blogging this coming week. I wish I could do it faithfully every week. But I’d rather write my best articles than write weekly articles, if you know what I mean by the difference (and I think you do!)
Well done with your manuscript and your blogging, and very, very best wishes for the success of both.
Thank you for your best wishes…I could always use positive energy in my back pocket! So sorry about your sweet doggy…I hate seeing my fur babies grow old. I do not like letting them go from where they came. I can be quite selfish about that
Hi Belinda,
I love how you make your blog posts to accesible and so downright interesting and helpful! I have read this post before and at that time I thought, yep, this makes perfect sense and I am going to do what Belinda says – I was suffering from a kind of blog fatigue at the time and finding it challenging to find interesting things to write on a regular basis ( if at all!). Did I follow your advice? No! Grr! But re-reading your post again now, I am even more convinced that what you say will be really helpful. So, I am going to get myself organised. IT may take a while but I’m looking forward to following your five recommendations and not let blogging be a burden 🙂
Thanks Marianne, I’m glad it’s helped you. I need to listen to my own advice too! I’ve been working such long hours recently that the blog has suffered, again. I’ve decided I’m not going to beat myself up over that, since Life Happens sometimes. I will continue to favour quality over quantity.
That pressure to keep building traffic can become a hard taskmaster, and I need to remind myself that it’s not actually the reason I’m doing this. Having lots of people flitting through my blog is not nearly as valuable to me as having people who really do want to discuss the types of things I think are important.
This reminds me, I’d better go write a blog post for this week. I’ve had a draft sitting there for the past week. 😉
Oh the happy happenstance of accidentally coming across this particular post Belinda ! I’ve been having mad back problems myself and not on top of much, let alone my fledgling blog. Some great ideas, tips and encouragement in here. Thank you, Lisa xx
So glad it was encouraging for you Lisa. There are times in life when everything is on top of us, instead of the other way around. Hope your back starts behaving itself soon. Back pain can be crazy! And I see from your blog that you’ve had plenty of other complications in life to deal with as well. Be kind to yourself. 🙂 Thanks for visiting.
Belinda
Great post. I just found your blog and subscribed in feedly!
I think that regular blogging is critical for bloggers, and that some bare bones SEO knowledge is good too. You can still write about what interests you, but simply by changing a few things around, good SEO practices can skyrocket your traffic.
Thanks Jeremy, and it’s lovely to have you aboard!
Regular blogging definitely does make a difference. I’m just encouraging writers to blog anyway, until they can build up to a regular schedule. 🙂
I’m one of those bloggers who chugs along, blogging not too frequently but at least a few posts a month, and then falling completely off the grid for a few weeks (or months) at a time. Very bad form for a blogger, I know, but I can’t bring myself to pack it in. When I am blogging, I thoroughly enjoy it, and one of these fine years I’m going to find a rhythm that works. And when I do, these tips are going to come in mighty handy! As others have said, the “Tweet Old Post” plugin (oh, how I hate not hyphenating that word) is new to me, and I can see it’s value.
When I do blog (semi-) regularly, I agree that making friends and promoting other bloggers is a terrific way to build a network of writerly support that quite naturally results in more blog followers.
Great post, Belinda. Thank you!
Oh Kern, I know the problem! But I think you are absolutely right, the goal is “a rhythm that works”. And that’s a rhythm that works for YOU, not for anyone else. You’ll find it! Hang in there!
Thanks for dropping by. 🙂
Thank you for the helpful tips, Belinda. Here are a few more that readers may benefit from:
Rename pictures to reflect some of the terms readers use to find you in search engines. People find me using the term “panties” a lot—so all of my pictures are “panty” this and “panty” that. This is a helpful tip for SEOs in particular. No one sees the names of your pictures. It’s all behind the scenes.
Join others in one of their regular features—this links you to a community more and readers who like other blogs in your genre can easily find you. Make a commitment to visit other participants’ sites and comment on their contribution.
Diversify—write different kinds of blog posts within your genre. For example, make a content map for each month where you write commentary, a top ten list, a review, and a contest instead of always writing a narrative.
Contribute to a popular site in your genre. As a sex blogger, I submit pieces to e[lust] regularly. Every single one of my posts that got accepted last year made it to my Top Ten list for 2013. Every single one.
If you’re not sure about your writing, or if you want to improve, enlist the help of an editor. I have a list of what it means to be a good editor on my Guest Blogger page. Writing is very hard work and is like any other muscle—you need to use it to strengthen it.
Belinda–sorry for the not-so-deliberate typo. My oops! Please edit for me. Thanks!
Haha, no problem. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve been called Brenda… 😉
Thanks for these… all good tips. Guest posting for other bloggers, or contributing to a group site in either a fiction genre or a non-fiction field, can really help build community.
I was recently asked to contribute some blog posts to a Newsstand magazine, and that’s another good way to get involved with others without creating “duplicate content” issues by reposting an article.
Hi Belinda
Great to meet another Aussie (I’m just outside Brisbane). Found you via Twitter and am really enjoying your style. You share really great info in a way that even a technophobe like me can understand.
I write on my blog once per week and like you aim for quality over quantity. Most of my posts are 2000+ words with a fair amount of research behind it. I’ve only been blogging for a few months and am noticing a steady increase in unique visitors and page views – happy me!
I have also gradually added social media and linked it all together. I find BufferApp a great tool for this.
Thank you so much for sharing and I look forward to continuing to read your great stuff – no matter how often you publish.
Have a great day 🙂
Ian
Hi Ian, how amazing that you’re so near me geographically! Usually I’m talking to people in Alaska or the UK or Greece. 😉 Welcome to my blog, and welcome to blogging. Your consistency in once-per-week blogging is obviously paying dividends already. Keep up the good work.
Adding new features like new social media a bit at a time is a good way to do it, I think. Get a handle on one, and then explore another. Just today I signed up for Pinterest, having ignored it for ages. We’ll see how that goes. Twitter is my favourite, and I dabble in FB, LinkedIn and G+. I choose not to feel pressured to do any of them, just experiment and see what I enjoy and what works for me. To me, it’s not “social” if it ceases to be fun!
Wishing you all the very best for your writing and blogging! Belinda 🙂
Such words of wisdom, Belinda! So many bloggers I know are terrified that if they don’t blog every single day, their blog will simply fade away for lack of readers. But since I cut back to blogging once or twice a week, I’ve found that my monthly stats have been fairly stable; that is, when blogging every day, I didn’t get any more traffic than I do blogging just a couple of times a week. Interacting with other bloggers definitely helps build traffic, and since cutting back on my own posts, I have more time for that 🙂
So glad you have found a rhythm that works for you, Marie Ann. Blogging can be great fun and full of lovely benefits… but it can also become an enslavement if we’re not careful!
The fact that your stats remained stable after the reduction is a real eye-opener. No difference between daily and twice a week. I suspect the “blog every day” mantra might belong to an era that has now passed, because there are so many more blogs. People don’t want to be overloaded with information. But that’s just my hunch, I have no science to back it up!! 🙂
I’m with B on that hunch about the overload of information and blogging boom passing, or really just morphing. I came at it from a different angle but it seems to hold.
I’m mostly freelancing these days and only managing a post a month. My blog core audience is holding, but even though, according to some of my editors, I am getting good traffic and exposure on the other sites, it doesn’t translate to blog traffic, even when I post at the same time, similar topic, cross link, etc.
My tangental hunch to B’s: I think people are loyal to a few favorite blogs, usually on a topic or a community group, but otherwise are starting to read new collections, new online magazines. I’ve seen a bunch of these pop up in the past 9 months. Basically professional group blogging, they can combine all the old constant content and good content models. They streamline blog reading and the really polished ones have less ad visual clutter.
It’s all input overload resistance. This B, is why I think your model is the way forward for the individual blogger. People will come to a single blogger for community or specific information. But the old models are moving to groups in which constant, good, in depth content is easy.
Thanks AH. I’m really interested to see where some of the online magazines are heading. There are some great opportunities opening up out there…
I think AH is correct in noting that some bloggers manage to maintain a core community. That’s largely what has happened with me. Probably 90% of visits to my blog are the same people, but I also visit many of the same bloggers. Here’s where I wish more bloggers were like yourself or Anne R. Allen. It’s much easier for me to keep up with your blog than a few others that I follow. The more frequently a blogger posts, the harder it is for me to keep up. A few that I follow post several times a day; there’s no way I can read all that.
I should also mention that I do reblog a lot so technically I post more than 2x a week. But reblogs are easy and all I’m trying to do there is redirect my followers to another blog. I don’t suppose there’s one perfect, fail-safe schedule for blogging, but I do think bloggers should be mindful of info-overload, as you mention. We’re bombarded with information from multiple sources every day. I know my (aging) brain can’t really process info dumps as well as it used to 🙂
I’ll admit that I’m one of the most lackadaisical bloggers around. It bothers me more than I’d like to admit. I feel like I’m excluding a valuable resource (not to mention neglecting the people who help keep me relevant). :/
But, like you, I’ve noticed an upturn in my blogging. (Not to the point I’d like it, I’ll say with certainty, but definitely an upturn.) It started with me actually thinking about what I wrote. Crazy, huh? lol Then with figuring out how to actually use Twitter and LinkedIn, and making some very valuable connections with other bloggers and authors.
I didn’t know about the Tweet Old Posts options however. (Or the Evergreen Post Tweeter.) Does anyone know if they’ll work for Blogger like they do for WordPress?
Anyway thanks for that tip! I’d love to have some of my older posts get new love.
Hi BC, glad I’m not the only one who feels glum about my blogging at times! And also glad that you’re finding the way forward with your social media. I’ve been using LinkedIn more lately, too. It seems to be starting to come into its own, after being little more than an online resume service for years.
I think those plugins are purely for WordPress. I’ve done a quick google to see if anyone has one for Blogger, but no luck so far. Perhaps another reader who’s using Blogger will chime in with an answer!
Best wishes for your ongoing blog-building, even if you find you need to do it slowly-slowly. 🙂
Belinda, thanks so much for your shout-out! There’s not doubt about it, blogging can be a blessing and a burden – and as you know, I think it’s well worth the time. FYI, I’ve tried another option for automating past blog post links to Twitter. Some folks have trouble with Tweet Old Posts, so they can try “Evergreen Post Tweeter.” Same concept, slight differences, gets the job done. Congrats on your blog stats!
You’re very welcome, Molly! Thanks for the tip about the other plugin. More possibilities for us all.
And folks, Molly will tell you to blog consistently, hopefully weekly… and she would be right. 😉 (My addition is simply that if you find you can’t manage that, just blog anyway! It all helps!)
This is great, I didn’t know WordPress had a ‘Tweet Old Posts’ option, I’m going to look into that. I’ve been blogging more than writing lately, I’m aiming to post at least once a week. Thanks Ms Pollard
It’s in the plugin section, and quite easy to operate (even I figured it out! haha) I am trying diligently to do my once-a-week post this year also. Thanks for stopping by, Ms Pollard. 😉
There are many days when I enjoy blogging much more than trying to write my novel. I post twice a week and those posts help me feel like I’m accomplishing something because of the regular feedback and interaction. On the other hand, writing and now revising my book often feels like there is no end in sight.
That is so true, Jeri. The feedback cycle on a novel is so looong in comparison to a blog. I also think we improve our writing by blogging too, so it does contribute to the main WIP in a roundabout way.