I have a confession. It’s been nearly a year since my last blog post. Yep, I haven’t blogged for nearly a year. That adds up to an #epicfail on the “how to blog effectively” front. So here’s my admittance of guilt, proof of the power of blogging, and plan for the future. Hopefully, it will provide some insight and help you craft a plan for your business blogging efforts.
Yeah, that’s quite a gap in blog posts. What makes this even worse is that I’m constantly preaching the virtues of blogging to clients as well as attendees at Get Listed University events. In fact, my wife’s blogging for Bloom Spokane is part of my Get Listed analytics presentation.
In fact, I talked about her recent blogging success so much at our last few events that Matt McGee started calling me Ed “My Wife’s Blog Post” Reese. But she wrote an amazing article / interview that went viral in her niche. Talk about the power of blogging. It quickly boosted her to a national level and nearly doubled her average readership. Here’s a look at the timeline:
And not only did it help grow her audience, but it helped her search engine optimization efforts as well. Thanks to the new inclusion of social media signals into the search engine ranking algorithm (chronicled very well by SEOmoz here, and then tested on Twitter here, and detailed in amazing fashion here ) she is now ranking very well for a pretty broad phrase that’s often searched in her industry.
Nearly everyone I respect in the industry blogs on a regular basis and makes it part of their business practice. They’ve also told me in person (or publicly at conferences) how it has positively impacted their business, reputation, and careers. So whether it’s Rand Fishkin, David Mihm, Mike Blumenthal, Matt McGee, Lisa Barone, Neil Patel, or any of my awesome Get Listed compadres, they’ve all told me the power of words. In sequence. Online. That says stuff. Cool stuff. Insightful stuff. On a regular basis. It’s time to get back on track.
But if blogging is so dang effective, why doesn’t everyone do it?
- Writing is hard. I liken it to golf. I may get better but it will always be a challenge.
- It takes time. Life often gets in the way (work, kids, clients, etc.)
- It’s not a direct payoff. It nearly always gets bumped for client work.
- Consistency is hard. The ideas for posts don’t necessarily come on a regular basis.
So what am I going to do about it?
- Follow Matt McGee’s advice and blog regularly. For me, that’s going to start at one post a week.
- Create a blog publishing schedule to stay ahead of the game
- Invite my team as well as guest bloggers to participate and provide a richer forum & perspective.
- Create a process for publishing blog posts effectively.
Time for this epic blogging failure to come to a close. At least at the next Get Listed University event I won’t have to hide my head in shame when Matt McGee says “Would you trust someone (that has a blog) who hasn’t posted in six months?” Hey Matt, it was almost a year. But I’ve finally taken your advice 🙂
18 thoughts on “My Blogging Failure & Rebirth”
Welcome back! Oops, I haven’t blogged for a solid two months, then left a year out before that. Heck even David M. has had long blog sabbatical…. Guess it means other things are going good.
Thanks, Chris! Yeah, I think that’s how it typically goes. Blog a lot, get more clients, then stop posting because you’re too busy with client work. While I completely understand why that happens (and am just as guilty as everyone else), the people that blog through it all seem to take their success to the next level. Sure, there are always other factors involved. But I think if you look at the ones that have really grown their businesses, blogging is a big part of their success and something to emulate.
Hey, I resemble that comment!
In all seriousness, though, I think that not everyone needs to have the same approach to blogging. We can’t all be Professor Maps or Greg Sterling and publish 6-8 posts every single day. I set a goal to try to publish between 1-3 really good posts a month. Obviously the last 3-4 months I’ve been closer to “1” but I am realistic about how much time I can devote to it, and also (I think) in setting my readers’ expectations about frequency…
Good to have you back, Ed.
Ed, Very inspirational post. Thanks for giving us such a great visual example of the power of blogging. I’d better get to work creating a schedule! Mary
I heard that at the next Local U, Ed’s wife is going to do the presentation including a quote from Ed: “I’m so tiiiired…..”
@David Yeah, I completely agree. I think one post/week will be about right for me, wouldn’t recommend that (or any other frequency) as a best practice. I don’t think there’s a formula at all. It’s the expectation (like you mentioned). I think it also depends on the industry and other factors. We have the benefit of seeing many perspectives via our clients, conferences, and our own personal testing. The experience will be much different for the average business owner. Still, if they can find a way to connect with potential customers it will likely have a very positive impact on their business (says that guy that just wrote his first blog post in nearly a year 🙂
Ed, this is inspirational. I am guilty of really infrequent blogging and that’s just gotta change.
@Dev @Mary Thanks! Mike, I think Matt is probably the best at doing my impression of my wife’s “I’m tired,… Blogging is hard” line. I’ll just have a mic ready for him during our next event.
Hehehe – good stuff, Ed.
Yes, we’re all different and we have different goals, different priorities, different everything — and so blog activity will necessarily reflect that. But the evidence is pretty overwhelming from study after study after study that the more quality content you publish on your blog, the more traffic you get, the more conversions you get, the better it is for SEO purposes, etc.
I’ve yet to ever see a study showing that publishing quality content less often is better for anyone’s bottom line than publishing quality content more often. 🙂
Oh so true! “It nearly always gets bumped for client work.” I do really well keeping up with my ghost writing of clients blogs but not so well on my own. Mid Years resolution – to do better thanks for bringing us all to task.
Ed,
I feel your pain. I’ve been watching my blog stats go from all time highs when I was blogging daily. Once I actually opened the business and went to posting 1-2 times per week (if I’m lucky) I’ve seen a 20-30% drop in traffic. Content is king and it is further proof that Google likes fresh content and proper SEO’d (yep made that up) titles.
Glad to see you back in the bloggin’ saddle. You were kinda like the Loch Ness Monster or Big Foot, didn’t know if you actually existed or if it was just a conspiracy.
cheers!
Josh
I will take your words as a promise and will move your blog bookmark from under the line (where it was making company of the Martijn Beijk’s blog) to right after “Bing Search Blog”. If you write one more article like that in the near months, you’ll definitely go over it. Really looking forward to it.
@Josh With my large frame and less than routine shaving habits, I think Bigfoot fits pretty well.
Thanks for the kick in the butt Ed. I’m trying to make more time to blog too.
Will be good to have you blogging regularly. Now that you’ve posted this, you are obligated to us all to stay on track! 🙂
Of course, it will always be interesting to see how you’re able to tough it out over the long haul. Consistent blogging is kinda like New Year’s weight loss resolutions–it’s all great to acknowledge your failures and resolve to amend, but actually going out there and doing it past the first month and then the next and the next and so on is where the rubber meets the road. In the Kettle-Noir Department, I’ve resigned myself to at least one post a month, so I know how it feels to settle into that status quo. Looking forward to seeing you bust out and keep up the momentum–now that you’ve outed yourself. And maybe we can ask to guest-blog just to call you out if we see you slacking! 😉
Hopefully you won’t regret making this post! 😉
@Russell Yeah, the weight loss comparison is a good one. I’ve read that people that lose weight together have a higher success rate. Hopefully this public forum will provide the same type of group motivation for my continued blogging efforts.
It is I, the famous blogging wife of Ed Reese. I’m just glad that my ramblings on Bloom Spokane (and the data extracted from the site) have provided Ed with an entire year’s worth of conference speaking material and now content for his own posts. “Blogging’s hard. I’m tired!”
Ed, I’m so happy to read this post. (For a selfish reason, more below.)
Of anyone I can think of, you have a particularly great opportunity in blogging, because you’re doing things and learning things that benefit so many people. Which is one reason why you and your team are swamped with work. You have a lot to share and write about — this is clear from your personal appearances and presentations — making you even more swamped with work.
(A great man once told me, “If it were easy, anyone could do it.” )
From a purely selfish point of view, I hope you blog every week, or more. In spite of the workload. (Oh, you’ll hear from me if you’re late…)
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