A few months have gone by and your blog has an established readership. You are in the habit of posting regularly and you have a growing list of blog ideas. Your blog has some momentum…then you get really busy. There is no time to write blog posts and the habit starts to break. Soon three months has gone by and your blog is languishing.
Forsaken Blog Syndrome (FBS)
Every time I visit a business web site I look for a blog. The first thing I do when I find a blog is check to see how current the blogger is keeping it. Quite often I notice that the blog has been neglected and forgotten, sometimes for months or even years. These blogs are suffering from what I call Forsaken Blog Syndrome (FBS).
FBS is a terrible thing. When a blog has been neglected for a long time it reflects poorly on the blog owner and the business. If it is a bad case of FBS (more than a year has passed since an update) it will be better to just kill the blog. Otherwise, the impression it can leave a casual visitor is that here is a company that doesn’t follow through, that doesn’t stay current and connected with its customers. Because a blog is usually time-stamped neglecting it is far more damaging than neglecting your main web site.
Five Tips to Avoid FBS
The good news is that you can avoid FBS. Here are five ideas that should help:
1. Have a blogging plan. If you blog twice a week, you should setup a repeating task in your To-Do list software to bring up a reminder each time.
2. Share blogging duties. Find someone else in your organization who can also write blog posts. This way, when you get really busy someone else can still update your small business blog. And you can be accountable to each other.
3. Hire a ghostblogger. Similar to point 2, this relieves you of the entire blogging responsibility. When you are paying someone outside your company to blog you can be guaranteed of your blog staying current.
4. Promote your blog to your customers. If your best customers read and comment on your blog you will start to view it as an essential marketing tool. So you will be more likely to see it as a priority.
5. Write blog posts in advance. We all have busy times of the year. If you are a CPA, you might want to write a dozen or more posts in December and publish them gradually as tax season gets under way. Just make sure, come April 15, you get started back on your blog right away.
Today, a typical small business owner will always have too much to do. It is very easy to find excuses and before you know it your blog is suffering from FBS. But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can make your blog a major asset to your company. Be aware of FBS, take some steps to avoid it, and you will maintain a thriving and successful blog.
Photo courtesy of JIGGS Images
