I give my clients the advice to blog a minimum of once a week.

Why once a week?

When you blog once a week, you establish a rhythm of content creation, offering  valuable content consistently. Consistent posting fuels a successful online presence.

When you blog regularly, you give people a reason to come back to your website. They begin to look to you as an expert, a resource providing helpful advice.

Through your writing, you can build connections with your online community. As you increasingly connect with your readers, you will become memorable and build relationships.

I often get push back from my clients on this best practice, and though I understand the push back, and respect my clients’ professional commitments, I maintain that blogging regularly is important.

Why?

It’s not because I want my clients to aspire to be popular bloggers.

It’s not because I want to create unnecessary work for them.

It’s because blogging is one way to create fresh, new content for websites that cements thought-leadership and add value for fans, followers, and customers.

If your customers (or potential customers) come to your website once or twice and see that it is a static site, they will have little reason to return.

If, however, you are regularly creating new content that addresses core questions or felt needs, your customers will return regularly, waiting and looking for the new ideas and insights you can share.

Or, if your content connects on a personal level, people will come back because they want to hear from you, see what you’re doing, and stay in touch with you.

What happens when you stop blogging?

People may stop coming (directly) to your site. Once I click to a blog a few times and it has not been recently updated, I quickly decide that there is not a good reason to go back. When you stop blogging, you will see a decrease in direct traffic to your site. People who bookmarked your site for repeat visits may remove bookmarks to a site that lacks fresh interest.

Your site may not rank well on search. Search engines love fresh content. If your site is stale, you may see a decrease in search-driven traffic.

Fewer people will share your content. Fresh content drives social sharing. When you write something great, people will want to share it. Not so much on the post you wrote 8 weeks ago.

You may miss the opportunity to capture and share your best ideas. The weekly discipline of blogging will help you in articulating your stickiest thoughts and ideas. You can write out answers to questions that clients ask you frequently, or you can use your writing to explore new thoughts.

The best thing to do when you realize you’ve let your site become stale is to write something new.

I did that, now, when I realized that a week had past since my last post.

Because even though I give good advice, I do not always follow it consistently.

Tell me something! What motivates you to continue blogging regularly? Or, if you do not blog regularly, what is holding you back?

This week my team and I are supporting the book launch of Hooked on Customers by Bob Thompson. Bob writes about the importance of creating value for customers. While he does not specifically reference information and insights and value, I think he would agree with my assertion that we add value for our customers when we regularly share information they need. Bob’s book would be a great addition to your reading stack. I encourage you to pick up a copy, today! 

photo credit: KatieKrueger

Becky Robinson

I am the founder/CEO of the Weaving Influence team, the author of Reach: Creating the Biggest Possible Audience for Your Message, Book, or Cause, and the host of the Book Marketing Action Podcast. I’m a wife and mom of three kids, and I enjoy running, reading, writing, coffee, and dark chocolate.