Is it realistic to expect immediate results from blogging?
Recently, in my work with a professional organization whose objective is to increase member engagement, we decided to take advantage of pre-existing tools that were already available as part of the organization’s Website Content Management System. We activated the Blog.
The first challenge was to get everyone in a group of volunteers on board to contribute time and energy to make it happen. We were faced with creating original content that’s interesting enough to entice new readers, but also engaging enough to keep readers coming back for more. We took photos and videos and wrote posts about meetings, members, events and opportunities, and we began to populate a blog that wasn’t even in existence just a few weeks earlier.
Blogging is a lot like the hobby of feeding wild birds. The more feeders you have hanging, the more likely you are to be successful in attracting lots of birds. Similarly, if you have a website that is rich with lots of content, you’ll have more pages published online that are available to be indexed by search engines.
Blogging has a huge benefits when it comes to SEO.
Adding fresh content on an ongoing basis also prompts search engines to revisit the website frequently. So, keep putting out fresh and interesting varieties of seed into those feeders!
According to Hubspot, businesses that blog more than 20 times per month generate 5 times more traffic than businesses that blog fewer than 4 times per month. They also generate 4 times more leads than businesses that don\’t blog at all!
Posting about topics closely related to the organization’s offerings and activities is like selecting certain seed combinations to attract specific species of birds. On our posts, we use a different keyword phrases tied to a common theme. This serves to broaden the organic search profile of the organization’s website, and ultimately pull in more website traffic.
The process of blogging requires consistent effort carried out over time. We’re building a rich library of blog content that will feed the hungry birds who are attracted to our amazing feeding spot. If the birds fly off only to return later to empty feeders, they’re not likely to check in with much frequency going forward.
This is something I wanted to clarify when asked by a board member for stats to justify continuing the frequency of our blogging activity, just two months into it. Analytics can be useful to gauge where we are at this stage of the game — but only to demonstrate a baseline point.
The organization is doing the right things in taking on blogging as a powerful aspect of their overall marketing strategy. Within the first weeks and months, it’s too soon to think that high traffic numbers should justify the time invested in producing fresh content. When should we dive deeper into Analytics? We\’ll likely have enough data to consider from search engines when we are six months into it.
What we want to look at and learn from now with analytics is what kinds of content generate greater response. Which posts are working well (getting more likes, comments, and shares) and which are not resonating so much. Going forward, you’ll get to know of what kinds of seed the birds in your neighborhood really enjoy!