First Impressions

Nothing gives a bad impression quicker than seeing the site blog, front-and-centre, with the “latest” news being six months old. You may be better off without a blog at all at that point.  Visitors might be concerned – does this organization still exist? Are they too busy for my inquiries?

Old blog posts feel stale, but oddly enough old blog posts do add to the depth and breadth of  your perceived authenticity when they are built upon with regular new entries.

The Benefits of Blogging

A regularly updated blog attracts repeat visits, which builds you a community surrounding your online presence. If interested parties like what they read, they may come back, and might even comment on what you are saying and doing.

In addition, it’s not just about the visitors that come to the site. It’s also the visitors you could attract through search engines, more incoming links, and syndication.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the upsides of blogging regularly:

• Search Engine Visibility: Google and other search engines like to see regular updates. The more the site changes and adds new content, the better the rank it gets. Additionally, each new article increases the number of keywords associated with your content, potentially allowing your site to show up in search queries you might not have thought would relate to your site.
• Networks of Interest: This goes both ways – links in from others who find your articles interesting and relevant. Links out from your articles themselves to other sites online. The 'incoming' links attract more visitors, the 'outgoing' links help create “communities of interest” between websites, which again, search engines give heavy weight to when assessing the value of a site.
• Syndication: Allow other website owners to republish your articles, in exchange for a link back. You might think at first this is akin to someone else stealing your stuff, but this attracts new visitors from those sites that republish, and once again, improves your search engine ranking.
• Frequency & Authenticity: When you write new articles regularly, people subscribe and bookmark your site. The more they come back, the more they see your brand and the more they perceive you as an authentic source of information. As marketing frequency increases, potential for sales (for businesses) or engagement (social profit organizations) increases significantly.

So keep at it! Schedule a time every few weeks to sit down for an hour, or even just a few minutes, and write up something new and original. Republish content from elsewhere when you see something really good that's worth sharing. And whenever you have a thought for a good blog article but no time, write down the idea and keep a list – you’re bound to have a free hour at some point where you’d like to do a blog post but can’t think of what to write.

For more info on company blogging, check out The Secret of Succesful Company Blogging at Boagworld.