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As those of you who follow my blog know, I've been on hiatus for a little while. It was planned, intended and not pure laziness. Trust me when I say I needed to stop myself a number of times after reading something relevant and wanting to comment on the topic. What could possibly be the reason for this behavior from someone who regularly wrote 3x/week for most of 2011? In a word: evolution.
Staying On Course:
When you run any business or department, your main job is to stay on course once you have your goal. It's similar to a pilot flying a plane. Often, they are off course much of the time and need to make constant, small adjustments to remain on course and land at the correct destination. All of you are online readers. We read differently online than in print medium. We want to get to the point. Hence why short, relevant blog posts are pretty popular along with video and other entertaining variations. This requires a shift away from, well - you the reader. Trying to be relevant every day to an audience that hasn't fully engaged with you: comments; conversions; surveys; is futile if your goal is to generate leads. As enjoyable as blogging is to me, my goal is to generate leads for my company. If that is not happening or if efforts are attracting clients we don't want it's not worth doing, at least in the same way we have been.
Google Algorithms Killed the Blogger:
Search engines now over-rule people in who/what we need to write for online. This creates a greater writing challenge because readers only have so much time to read blogs. They need to filter out anything irrelevant. As a marketer, I live by the numbers. When a blog has lots of hits, but fluctuating rates of rapid abandonment you only have the content to blame. Readers found the subject (and keywords) compelling, but didn't find the topic relevant. *Click* Next site. Now as an online writer I can either become an SEO/keyword expert or loose valuable time-to-posting by running the post by my SEO/keyword expert to edit for the search engines. *Yawn* But, sadly a necessary choice in 2012. If you are blogging, in search of leads and not paying attention to search engine metrics, blogging is a tremendous time waster for you.
Damn Facebook:
People today feel that they have less time to get more done. A day doesn't go by where you don't hear or read the words time-management or multi-tasking. I disagree that we have more to do, we just lack priorities. Facebook, online games, email, meetings-for-meeting's-sake, text messaging: all are tremendous time wasters, but fun and addictive so we blame our schedules for our goofing off elsewhere. When we began attracting the wrong types of clients, I took a pause. It was time for a strategic course-correction. Blogging was the first time-waster I kicked off my schedule until I could decide what kind of content was going to help reach and convert our ideal client. Of course, this flies completely in the face of all experts singing the SEO praises of content. I realize that, but I'll risk admonishment to stay my course. (Note: I still recommend and use blogging strategically for clients when it helps them reach their online goals.)
Efficient Action:
Using time well does require tremendous will power, but it really is quite simple: be sure that everything you do during your day is successful in reaching your goal. The way to do this is to focus on one task at a time. People boast that they are great multi-taskers. The problem with that is they end up doing everything mediocre instead of successfully. Thus, I decided that our online efforts would be limited to occasion blog posts that truly mattered to our key targets (or me, because I really want to say something about a topic!) Other online content will change, too. Soon, most of our freebies will disappear (so get them now while you still can) because our surveys have shown that most of the freebie downloads were from people other than our target audience. We are only subscribing to efficient action in 2012. It will surely re-direct our marketing efforts and drive only those who are the clients we wish to convert.
I hope this doesn't disappoint some of you and motivates all who found this content relevant enough to read! If so, I welcome your comments below on this approach to marketing and blogging. I'm sure there will be some on both sides.
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