Maintaining a blog and keeping focused on it is hard. You may have heard one of us say this to you because we know it first hand.
If you look at the date of this blog post and the previous blog post, you’ll see that somewhere along the way, we lost some of our Sinclairity. So when we caution our clients that a blog is big commitment, we say so while shamefully remembering our neglected blog.
When the going gets tough due to busy schedules, unexpected changes or a lack of focus, a blog is one of the easiest things to let slide. So how do you regain that focus? Here’s what we’ve done.
1. Review where you were.
Read your previous posts and see what you think of them. Use the distance and perspective to think about what you’d like to do differently.
2. Document where you want to be.
The big takeaway from our blog review is that we didn’t always focus on our four core competencies: marketing strategy, creative, digital and PR. We meandered a bit from our strengths and how we execute on them on a weekly basis. So our plan is to take a more introspective approach to future blog posts and share our perspectives on these areas.
Another idea that we’ve helped our clients with is to brainstorm a list of potential topics and put them on paper. These could be evergreen topics that you can pull from any time to quickly write on a topic you know well. These are good supplemental materials to the day-to-day work you’re doing or current events in your outside world – from your local community to your industry.
3. Repurpose!
The time it takes to put together a blog post seems like a better use of time when you’re using that content multiple ways. We will strive to integrate our Pinterest, Twitter, blog and our newly updated website to tell an ongoing story in a few different ways.
Since we last left our blog in 2010, a lot has changed in the social media world. Many of us at the agency are more involved in Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook and LinkedIn for ourselves and our clients and have been integrating them in interesting ways. We’ll talk more about that in another post.
4. Don’t go it alone.
We are a team of authors who hold each other responsible for generating new content. That’ll help.
If your blog has a single author, then reach out to your network, audience or colleagues for inspiration. Sometimes blogging can seem like shouting into a black hole, but knowing that you have a support network that is listening to what you have to say can add purpose to your posts. And it’s never a bad idea to keep your audience in mind for anything you’re writing.
5. It happens.
I recently heard from one of my favorite blogger friends who had slowed the pace of posting to his own blog. He shared that he was taking some time to reassess his material. I liked hearing this for a couple of reasons.
First, it’s a great idea to proactively take a step back and review your content and see if it is speaking to your own perspective and adding to the conversation. How are people responding to your posts: which ones draw the most comments, which the least?
Second, it is comforting to know that even a very good blogger who is an author and has a strong, unique perspective struggles. It happens.
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