October is in full swing and Halloween is just around the corner. We can’t help but notice the endless amount of paranormal and zombie TV shows on every channel, which might remind you of something that you allowed to die some time ago—your company blog.
When the buzz of business blogging dies down and your efforts fall flat, it’s easy to abandon your company blog and let it fade away from existence. While bringing people back from the dead proves to be a challenge, you can easily bring your business blog back to life with a bit of strategy and planning.
Why do Business Blogs Die?
Most companies don’t start a business blog with the intention of allowing it to fizzle out. But the reality is that 95% of blogs (business blogs or otherwise) are abandoned. What makes this statistic even scarier is that it was reported back in 2009. The percentage of abandoned business blogs could be even higher today.
But whether this statistic is currently 95% of 99.9%, why are these numbers so high?
There are several key reasons why companies send their blog to the blogging graveyard, including:
Lack of Time
One of the challenges of business blogging is that it requires a set amount of time that you need to dedicate each week to see results. This isn’t saying that you need to spend 8 hours on one blog post, but writing up a blog in 5 minutes isn’t going to do you much good, either. That’s because high quality blog posts require research, strategy, and promotion in order to get the most for your ROI.
No Strategy
Speaking of strategy, you’re giving your blog a death wish if you don’t have a plan to keep it alive and kicking. You’ll need a strategy in order to research the best topics, keep on top of customer questions and feedback, and stick to a publishing schedule. If you’re simply winging your company’s blog routine, you’re sailing on a sinking ship.
No Traffic
If you take the time to craft compelling blog content for your business, certainly you want customers to read it. But businesses might choose to abandon their blogs because they aren’t getting any traffic to their blog in the first place. While no audience to read your blog is discouraging, this problem typically stems from a poor promotion strategy and a bad selection of topics.
Giving up Too Soon
While blogging can help boost business, it can take a while to see results. Unfortunately, we live in a world of instant gratification where many businesses aren’t willing to dedicate a couple months worth of well-planned and high quality blogging efforts. If the phone doesn’t ring after the first blog post or two, some companies will simply throw in the towel, resulting in yet another abandoned blog that’s floating around in cyberspace.
How to Bring Your Blog Back From The Dead
If you allowed your company blog to die for one reason or another, you can bring it back to by using a combination of techniques. Once your blog is back on the mend with a new life and purpose on the horizon, you can finally start discovering how an active company blog can improve your business. But first, here’s how you can bring your blog from abandoned to active.
1. Take Inventory of Your Old Blog Posts
Give yourself a blog audit and find out what blog posts that you currently have in your archives. What topics did you cover? Can you improve on any of those old blog posts and re-promote to stretch your efforts further? Sometimes old blog posts can be a good foundation to get the ball rolling again, but you’ll need to add more value (and possibly reformat) if you plan to re-promote. This strategy can help save you time as you brainstorm new topics and continue building onto your blog.
2. Research Competitor Blogs
If you’ve been off the blogging scene for a while, start by digging into your competitor’s blogs. Take note of what they are talking about and how their audience is responding to their content. This can give you a quick clue as to what your target customers want to read. You can also use competitor posts as inspiration to add a new angle, offer more value, and cover any information that they missed. Don’t directly swipe an idea to pass it off as your own; the idea is to play catch up on the competition and see how you can improve on their efforts.
3. Bring Back Your Best Keywords
During your initial blogging efforts, you may have researched a keyword or two to include in your posts. Remember to include some of those keywords in your blogs, which will help you stay on topic and attract the correct customers to your blog. Although your blog strategy shouldn’t be centered on a single keyword, it’s still helpful to include them in your content for SEO purposes.
4. Create a Blogging Schedule
Perhaps one of the reasons that your company blog died is because you didn’t have a schedule set from the beginning. If that’s the case, don’t set yourself up for failure the second time around. Open up an Excel spreadsheet or Google Docs and create a calendar that you can easily follow for strategizing, writing, and promoting. You can even write out future social media posts to save yourself time in the future.
Not sure how to create a blogging schedule? We can do it or you with our blog strategy service, tailored to the specific needs of your business.
5. Focus on Quality Over Quantity
When you’re bringing your company blog back from the dead, you don’t want to burn yourself out by attempting to write 10 posts a week. If you focus too much on quantity, the quality of your content will significantly drop because you’ll be too worried about moving onto your next article. Re-launching with poor quality content defeats the purpose of bringing your blog back from the dead.
Keep in mind that customers would rather read one compelling blog post per week than 10 unhelpful posts, so assign yourself to write a number of articles that is reasonable for your writing speed and schedule.
6. Liven Things Up With Compelling Language
If you’re dedicating yourself to a new blogging schedule and starting a new, don’t let dull language suck the life out of your blog. Make sure your headlines are compelling enough for customers to click, and keep the tone and style of your blogs consistent. Add punchy sub headers and use interesting adjectives. Fun and colorful language can make all the difference with engagement and ROI.
7. Add Pizazz to Your Presentation
Nothing makes a business blog feel more alive than a powerful presentation. If your old blog routine consisted of publishing one big block of text, now is your chance to change your ways. Remember to use sufficient white space in your blog along with headers and sub headers (H2 and H3 tags), as well as bold and italic text for a dash of visual interest.
Furthermore, including original graphics and photos to your blog not only adds life, but also personality. You don’t have to refrain from showing any personality just because you’re writing for a company blog—in fact, your audience will probably see it as a breath of fresh air. Remember, people buy from brands that talk and act like real, likable people.
8. Don’t Forget to Promote
You don’t want to go through all this work to bring your blog back from the dead, only to let your new posts sit on your website undiscovered. In order to bring traffic to your company blog and attract potential new customers, you’ll need to promote your posts. You can promote your blog on your choice of relevant social platforms, as well as places such as LinkedIn and Google+. Plan to share your blog post wherever you can find your audience spending time online, and customers will eventually find their way to your blog.
Bring Your Blog Back From The Dead: We Can Help
If you abandoned your company blog some time ago, it’s not too late to bring it back to life. Contact Busy Blogs Plus to dust off your blog’s cobwebs, and turn it into a smart marketing solution that boosts business.
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