Don’t Abandon Your Blog Too Early

When you first start blogging it’s easy to get discouraged. You don’t receive many page views each day, the content doesn’t generate comments or questions, and and it feels like it takes more work to post the blog than it’s worth. Though it’s a tough road in the beginning, you are using your blog to build a brand and spread a message that will eventually see huge returns.

Before you abandon your blog, understand there are several important factors that influence the effectiveness of your posts.

Keyword Targeting:

Do you know which keywords customers use to find your site? Do you know which terms they use that lead them to your competitors? This information is crucial when you make a blog post. When you target the right keywords, your blog posts appear organically among the search results when potential customers search for terms related to your business. In the industry this is known primarily as content marketing, which uses a consumer’s natural curiosity to spread information about your company. If you don’t include the proper keywords, consumers will only find your blog posts when they’re already on your site.

Using The Wrong Platform:

Blog posts don’t generate buzz on their own; you have to be proactive in sharing your posts with current and potential customers. The easiest way to do so is through social media, but that doesn’t mean you can use just any social media platform to hit your target demographic. Facebook remains popular with most Americans, but there are better ways to target more specific consumers. For instance, Twitter ranks as the most popular social media outlet for people under the age of 25. Female consumers heavily populate Pintrest and Instagram, while males often use Google+. If you’re trying to attract B2B commerce, you’ll see the best results when you utilize LinkedIn as your social media platform of choice. When share posts and talk about your blog on the right platform, you’re more likely to attract the right consumer for your business.

Cumulative Growth:

When you look at site traffic and see very few page views on your blog posts it’s a crushing feeling, but you should never get too focused on individual pages or daily traffic numbers. Your posts are most successful when they build cumulative traffic over weeks and months. The number of daily visitors will spike after a new post, followed by a sharp decline once consumers read the content. It’s exciting to see that surge of traffic, though the excitement fades as the traffic tapers off. If you view cumulative numbers instead, you’ll see that your blog posts, even those that are a year old, are always generating more traffic, and the total number of views for a post over the lifetime of the content far exceeds the first day bump. If you look at the big picture, you’ll see that your blog posts are an investment that doesn’t necessarily pay off in a week, but will create returns in the long-term.

A well maintained blog is the cornerstone of today’s digital marketing strategies. It’s likely to be the first impression you make on potential customers, and the failure to provide adequate content undermines your other online efforts. Don’t give up on your blog too early, instead, let it grow and feed your business for years to come.