Why you really shouldn’t blog (until you’ve read this)

 

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard people say that blogging doesn’t work, or that it’s outdated or a waste of time. Yet when I look at their past efforts, I can so easily see why they believe that to be true. Our human brains are wired to believe what we experience. To look for evidence. And if you’ve tried blogging and had your efforts fall flat, you’re naturally going to conclude that it just doesn’t work.

But hang on. My evidence suggests otherwise. I’ve seen time and time again that having a consistent blog as part of your marketing strategy works, and works bloody well. So what gives?

You see, one of my very first clients hired me to write a weekly blog for her. She’d played around with blogging for over a year, but the posts were rushed and a bit…meh. She didn’t have the time to research them properly. And her schedule for posting them was all over the place, with some being a week apart, and some being left a month or more.

Once I’d written a few posts for her on a proper schedule, she began to see amazing results. On our 6-month review, we were both astounded to learn that her website views had doubled, just from her blog page alone! This, in turn, meant that the courses she was selling went through the roof, and she had more enquiries than she’d ever had before.

If that’s not proof, I don’t know what is.

Blogging done wrong

There are 3 main reasons why blogging might not have worked for you, and each one of these can be put right. Let me go through them – let me know if you’re a repeat offender for any of these issues:

Sporadic blogging schedule

Inconsistent blogging is the biggest reason for failure. You set up a blog, post a few times in a row, and then get too busy to keep up. Suddenly, it’s been two months since your last update.

Think about it this way. If you started to watch a really good series on TV, and after the third episode, there were no more for ages, despite you checking in regularly. How long would it take for you to stop bothering and find something more reliable? A month? Two? The trust is gone, right?

People like consistency. And so does Google. If you want your content to rank, you need to publish regularly. Google forgets old content and favors fresh material. That doesn’t mean you have to blog twice a week. It could be once a month—as long as you stick to it.

Low-value content

Sort of related to the last point but not really, is posting for the sake of posting. When you overstretch yourself with an unrealistic schedule, you end up rushing and publishing low-effort content.

This kind of content doesn’t help anyone. Google won’t rank it, your audience won’t read it, and you’ll have wasted your time. If you’re blogging regularly but still seeing no results, this could be why.

AI generated content

Ooh now this one is bound to raise a few hackles! There’s a great divide in the subject of using AI to produce content. Some people think it’s the future. But here’s the thing: content generated by AI is never truly original.

I know there is the argument that AI is learning to mimic our individual styles and voices, etc – I get that. But the sources that it uses to ‘scrape’ that information in order to write are largely from the internet. It take little snippets of information from loads of different online sources, and puts it together to create something new.

We all know (at least I think we do!) that there is a lot of published information on the internet that has never really been verified as fact. As humans, we can fact-check what we read online. AI can’t do that. At least not yet. So there is no way of knowing that what AI is producing is verifiable.

Google’s stance on this is that they will allow AI-generated content (at least for the time being) provided it “is helpful, reliable, and trustworthy, regardless of whether it's created by humans or AI.

 Google suggests disclosing the use of AI, particularly when it substantially generates content. This transparency helps users understand the origin and nature of the content they are consuming.”

A recent update to YouTube’s policy suggests that it will penalise AI content in its next update – and I suspect that at some point, Google will have to follow suit, along with all of the major players across social media.

How to blog the right way

·        Make a proper plan

·        Research your subjects

·        Manage your time

·        Hire out to someone else

Alexander Graham Bell said, “Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.” Before you write a blog post, plan when you’ll write, what you’ll write about, and what kind of schedule you can realistically manage.

And if you can’t do that, you have two options: don’t blog. Or outsource. (Yes, that’s a blatant plug!) But seriously, investing in professional blog writing could save you a lot of time and effort. I’d be more than happy to talk about how I can help.

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