Are You Blogging Enough?

A question I’ve been asked a few times of late: “Do I need to blog? and if so how often should I post?”

My thoughts are if you have a website it is a good idea to blog. Before I go much further I want to take a time out and explain what a “blog” is.

A blog is actually an abbreviation for “Web Log”. An easy way to understand what blogging is, is to think of it as journaling. It’s a post or serious of posts about your what ever your hearts desire. I’ve seen blogs on hundreds of topics. Topics like becoming a parent; becoming a dad; becoming a mom; being a grandparent; there are food blogs, help blogs; blogs on training fitness; woodworking; you name it you can probably find a blog on it.

That brings me around to why you should be blogging and are you blogging enough?

If you like writing then blogging maybe for you. It’s a good way to become an expert on your topic and there are various ways to monetize a blog if you so choose but that is another discussion. (Just ask if you are curious about that.)

Returning back to my thought above, “if you have a website it is good to have a blog.” Many business and website owners these days are using blog software (WordPress) to build their site on and some people are under the impression that if they build their site on the WordPress platform they don’t need to blog and in my humble opinion that’s not exactly true.

While having a site built on that platform does help you in search engine listings for the most part (provided you have it set up correctly – again ask if you have questions.) I still think it is a good idea to set up a blog on the site as well.

And here is why I think that, it tells the the search engines that you are an active business and have fresh content on your site. It adds additional relative content to the site and it gives the customer/end user more information about your product or service. Plus it keeps the visitor on your site longer which gives you more leverage of promoting what you are offering.

In addition search engines monitor visitors length of visit. If they see the visitor was there a while it means your site was relevant for what they were searching for which in turn creates better ranking for you.

The final question which is where we actually started, Are you blogging enough? In most cases I would have to say that answer is NO! Many blogs I have seen there may be only two posts on a blog that’s a few years old some I see maybe two posts a year. Ideally, I would think two posts a MONTH is the bare minimum. Now that is just my humble opinion, and with that being said there are times where I get SO busy that I do in fact forget to blog. In general I’d actually like to get at least two blog posts a week.

There are so many things to blog about for your business. Think about special offers, new product lines, maybe even your policies on doing business, business beliefs, Ideas for new product lines, tutorials on how people could use your products, problems your product helps the visitor solve. Maybe even tips that some one that buys products could use even if it isn’t related to your product.

Blogging about these kinds of things helps build a relationship with your you customer or potential customer. They will want to come back and see what you’ve posted next and in the process they may find out they do in fact need your product or service.

These are just my thoughts, as always I appreciate your opinion and comments even if they differ from mine. Feel free to post your comments in the space provided below.