You can read (ironically) a blog post every day or so telling you that blogging is dead. They tell you to write into Facebook notes or into Medium or anywhere but on your own blog. They tell you that no one visits blogs any more. And whoever “they” is have lost tons and tons of opportunities over and over again while shifting between platforms while giving you that advice.
Blogging Is Not Dead
Blogging is alive and well. People create content of varying levels of value every day. There are dozens and dozens of posts created on some sites each day while other people have switched to a weekly frequency. But millions of new pages of content are created daily, no matter where you fit in the spectrum.
Visiting Blogs Might Be Dead
What might be dead is the act of visiting a specific website for a specific blog post, unless you got there via Google search. People don’t eagerly work through their RSS readers (except the die hards). People are subscribing less and less to blogs outright.
They’re consuming blogs on places like Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest and elsewhere. They’re clicking through from lots of various sources instead of coming directly to the blog.
The Value of Your Own Blog
Search is still one of the most important parts of discovery and opportunity on the Internet. Ads and search are pretty much it. There are two ways to get attention to your posts and your site and ultimately what you sell.
* Ads
* Search
The value of Facebook advertising is going up. It’s a very cost effective way to earn some attention if you have something useful to sell. There are other methods of getting attention through other ad networks but they work to varying degrees.
Search, however, is alive and well. The rules have changed a lot. You actually have to have useful information that people will want. Gone are the days of “Just write something because we were told to have a blog by some ‘guru.'” Instead, you have to have created something of value.
How Should You Use Your Blog
The best way these days to use your blog is as follows:
- Write a really useful post about something that relates to what you sell, whether or not someone ultimately buys whatever you’re selling. Within that post, have one or two links to that which you sell. (Otherwise, it’s just information, which is useful, but doesn’t help your business goals).
- On the blog site, have a pop-up to offer access to your newsletter. (Make the content of the newsletter different than what you post on your blog – put your better stuff in your newsletter).
- Write a summary of the post and put it on Facebook with a link to your blog post.
- Do this on LinkedIn and/or wherever else you might hope to attract the attention of potential buyers.
- Tweet links to your blog post at least 4 times in any given day, interspersed around other more useful tweets.
- Re-promote this content over the next 2-3 days, and again a week later.
Your blog is built to capture the attention of the people you hope to serve and help in some way. You might not have to write a post daily to earn people’s attention, so instead, focus on making that which you write more useful.
Serve others and earn the right to help even further. That’s the purpose of your blog.
But Why Maintain Your Own Blog Website?
Because you’re only RENTING Facebook and Medium and anywhere else. It’s not your URL. It’s not your content. They have rules. They can kick you out whenever you want. You lose all Google juice for search purposes. You can’t as easily sell and promote via those channels without some extra hoops and effort.
That’s why.
Learn More
I work with people via my Owner Unlimited webinars series to help with all the details of putting together the mechanics of owning your business. We have webinars like “Start Podcasting” and “Blogging for Business” and more. It’s like Netflix. You get access to everything for one monthly fee. Take a peek HERE.
Source post: Blogging Isn’t Dead