As with everything digital, blogging is an evolving field. What was
once an accepted blogging practice may just not work in today’s changed
landscape. So it may be time to sit back and evaluate whether generally
accepted blog best practices still apply to you or not.
Here are eight current blogging practices that may be near the end of their lifelines:
1. Post Five Times a Day to Increase Traffic
It was once considered a standard rule that traffic is directly
proportional to the number of posts. Therefore, to increase traffic, you
upped output and frequency. There are many bloggers who would benefit
from an increase in post frequency. However, each blogger’s threshold of
that frequency will vary.
For example, a prolific high-profile blogger such as Michael Hyatt recently
stated: "I used to recommend blogging five times a week. For some time
now I’ve blogged two to three times a week and have seen the same level
of reader growth. By cutting back the frequency I freed myself up to do
other things."
Hyatt also referenced Tim Ferriss’ book, The 4-Hour Body,
where Ferriss discusses the concept of the Minimum Effective Dose (MED).
The MED is the "smallest dose that will produce the desired outcome" or
as Ferriss quotes Olympic coach Henk Kraaijenhof: "Do as little as
needed, not as much as possible."
The concept of blogging as much as is needed to maintain or grow
traffic is a new one. No longer do you have to increase blog frequency
to increase traffic. Glen Alsop from Viperchill posts once or twice a
month and gets 120,000 visitors per month while Seth Godin posts daily
(sometimes even twice a day) and has similar stats.
New Rule: Therefore, the new rule of blogging is to
find your frequency sweet spot. It may be more or less than your current
frequency, but by experimenting, you’ll be able to find your optimal
posting frequency – the minimum number of posts needed every month to
keep your blog on an upward trajectory.
Put another way, Hyatt states, "To make progress on the things that
matter most, we can’t afford losing ground by trying to do too much —
even if we’re trying to do the right things."
2. Leave Blog Comments
Like most people, I was quite surprised when Copyblogger closed off
comments on its blog. Weren’t comments supposed to be the life-blood of
engagement? And wasn’t Copyblogger all about encouraging a dialogue with
your blog audience? These questions swam in my mind before I read Sonia
Simone’s post explaining why.
It seems that the decision was in large part administrative.
Copyblogger receives a lot of spam and to sift through that was becoming
counter-productive for them. Instead of comments, they encouraged their
audience to start a discussion on their social media outposts, most
especially on Google Plus. But more than that, they lobbied that those
who have something substantial to say should say it on their own blog
and reference the Copyblogger post.
What Copyblogger ended up doing, in fact, is helping us remember that
the only way to cut through the noise is to produce substantive
content. And if a comment is thoughtful, then why not put it on its own
pedestal as a complete blog post?
New Rule: Thanks to Copyblogger, the new blogging
rule is to write out a blog post in response to a post and expand your
initial comment to include a divergent viewpoint or more insights.
Remember, if your insights are substantial, they probably warrant a blog
post of their own.
3. Outsource Your Blog to a Professional
Content creation has always been outsourced and will always continue
to be outsourced. But more and more bloggers are now realizing that
outsourced content will never get them the leadership status they crave.
This point is ironic coming from me, as my company produces content for
clients.
Neil Patel recently wrote an excellent article for HubSpot titled
"Why You Should Write Your Own Content," where he said, "Content writing
isn’t just something that I do on the side. It is a core component of
what I preach and practice every day of my life. Content is that
important. As an entrepreneur and a content marketer, I recommend that
you write your own content."
Patel cited five reasons why entrepreneurs should write their own
content: better expression, brand authenticity, experience of speaking
and responding to your audience, and staying abreast of industry trends.
New Rule: Produce your own content. If you
absolutely can’t, then make content creation a bilateral process. Have
brainstorming content meetings where the client and the bloggers
together forge topics, direction, and voice. I encourage my clients to
write their own posts in addition to the ones that we write for them.
And I have seen the results first hand.
Entrepreneurs who write for their own blogs (in addition to
outsourcing content creation) are more confident about what they want to
say and are more in tune with their audience than those who outsource
the entire process.
4. Always Write 100% Original Content
Oh pffft! With so much pressure to create content, bloggers need to
cut themselves some slack and embrace the time-saving practices of
content curation and repurposing. No one creates 100 percent original
content all the time anyways. People are always getting inspired by
others and riffing off of others.
New Rule: Curate, re-purpose, mash-up other people’s
content and give your unique take on it. Give attribution and credit to
your sources and references always.
And don’t just curate other people’s work, but also repurpose your
own work. Dig through your archives looking for ways to put a new spin
on an old topic or converting your post into another format to give it
new life.
5. Not Every Post Needs to Have an Image
Every text post MUST have images. So should every podcast or video
post. The Web is increasingly visual, but you already knew that, right?
Do you also know what every image should have, besides being compatible
with the post?
Derek Halpern states,
"You should never run an image without an interesting, persuasive
caption. I know this sounds crazy…it’s just a silly caption. But, as
Drew Eric Whitman points out in Ca$hvertising, 'Studies have shown that
up to twice as many people read captions as body copy.'"
If you think about Twitter and consider the 140 characters a caption
of sorts, then the attached image becomes even more relevant. When
Buffer experimented with adding images to tweets and measuring the
results of the last 100 tweets, here’s what they found: Tweets with
images received 18 percent more clicks, 150 percent more retweets, and
were favorited 89 percent more times than tweets without images.
New Rule: Add both images and captions to every
piece of content you create. It’s good for capturing eyeballs, it’s good
for SEO, and it’s good for social sharing.
6. Stick to One Type of Format
Trent Drysmid of BrightIdeas.co
was frustrated as to why his blog traffic was not increasing at a
faster pace, despite him having a podcast with big-name entrepreneurs
and earning some stellar praise from fellow bloggers. Turns out, his
problem was podcasting. Or, only podcasting. As soon as he started to also write
content (among other tactics), his readers were able to quickly scan
his content and subscribe to his blog and he experienced a rise in
traffic.
When you restrict yourself to producing just one type of content
format, you also risk a traffic plateau for visitors who consume content
in that format.
New Rule: Jazz up your content by producing the same
or different content in multiple formats: written content, graphics,
podcasts, videos, presentations, etc. This way, you’ll attract people
who and squeeze plenty of SEO juice for your multiple formats.
7. Write a 500-Word Blog Post
Honestly, the era of the 500-word blog post is dead. Gone are the
days when word count determined quality. Short posts are still popular.
Quality listicles are still read. Longer posts (up to 2,000 words) are
read, too. Word count just doesn’t matter anymore.
New Rule: Your post needs to be to convey your point and not any longer.
8. Don’t Publish Your Articles on Third-Party Sites
When James Clear wanted
to reach more people with his content, he knew that peddling his blog
post on his own social media accounts wouldn’t cut it. He needed to
promote his posts to a larger audience with a larger social network.
Enter content republishing, aka syndication.
Sites like Medium, LinkedIn, Quora, The Huffington Post,
Business2Community, and more all allow for your content to be
republished on their sites. Of course some have specific rules about
what’s allowed for syndication and you’ll need to read each site’s terms
to see what they are. Generally, however, these sites will provide you
an author bio linked to your G+ profile, and possibly a link back to
your site where the original article first appeared.
I know what you’re thinking. What does republishing the exact same
content do to invoke Google’s duplicate content penalty? According to
bloggers who regularly syndicate their content to quality sites:
diddlysquat. Reputed institutes like the Content Marketing Institute
(CMI) regularly syndicate their content without any penalties.
James Clear was able to grow his blog to more than 76,000 subscribers
using content syndication on sites like The Huffington Post, Medium,
and Quora without any duplicate content penalties.
New Rule: Promote your content on reputable third-party sites,
which provide a link back to where content was originally published,
and also give an author bio tied in to your G+ profile. You can wait a
week or two before giving your content for republishing. That’s enough
time for search bots to know where and when the original article was
first published. Include links within your article that point back to
your site to drive traffic.
Summary:
Your turn! What blogging guideline do you think should bite the dust?
Which ones have withstood the test of time and will continue to be
hailed as best practices? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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