Blogs – a term that has been around for as long as we can remember, but the definition and importance of it has changed so much.  Once something only within the realm of angsty teenagers and amateur aficionados, blogs have turned into the content hub and voice of many businesses online.  Blogs have facilitated political views, new findings, and academic discussions.  They have also fueled the core SEO of many successful digital campaigns.

So, how and why do blogs have such power?  First off, blogging is arguably the easiest way to add new content to your blog.  While most businesses will stick within the confines of their industry and business operations in discussions, many have gone off to just straight up speak your mind, which is an interesting approach to either gaining a loyal following or alienating a few demographics. (We talk about that in a previous blog entitled “How Much Personality Does Your Content Need?”).  Blogs also almost always discuss very niche, long-tailed subject matter, and if you happen to hit one that is trending, you can expect an influx of lots of traffic over a short period of time.  Blogs are also linked to pingbacks in WordPress, for example.  These are great at notifying outside sources that you’re consistently bringing in fresh, new content.

So how often is good?  We’ve talked to many SEOs from New York City to Florida all the way out to Seattle, and the magical number always seems to float around “blogging twice a week” which would equate to roughly 8 blogs a month.  This  number seems solid for a number of reasons: adding about 100 pages to your website a year via blogging is solid, and having 8 different things to write about (or perhaps 4 2-part blogs?) a month will be easy on the writer’s block.  Writing 15 blogs daily and then having a 17 day gap from getting burnt out will not look good.  In that situation, you could always schedule them out apart for a more consistent blog.

If you feature a blog feed and/or disseminate blogs via social, you may not want to overwhelm people with the amount of content you are producing unless you believe it to be genuinely helpful and interesting.  Remember to keep analytics on your blog too – we’ve seen clients set up analytics for all of the pages of their website and not for the blog.  This is sometimes a situation because of the construct of the site initially versus the blog architecture being implemented after.  Also, we would strongly recommend having your blog on your website.  You’re writing for your website, not for Blogspot or WordPress.  What about guest blogging then, you ask?  Well that’s a whole ‘nother topic!

Remember, there are many reasons you want to blog besides SEO and Social implications.  Blogs are also ideal for re-purposing –  if you talk enough about one area of subject matter, before you know it, you have the entire foundation of making an incredible freemium.

Sometimes as business owners, as much as we know the importance of blogging and we’d like to do it, we won’t always have time.  Contact us at Market My Market if you need assistance with managing your blog.