You’re sitting at your desk, fingers flying over the keyboard as you send your last email of the day. A notification pops up on your to-do list. Your blog post for that week is due. It’s almost 5 pm on Friday – how will you find time to write something?
You move the task to next week’s to-do list. You’ll look at it again on Monday.
Trouble is, this is getting to be a common occurrence. It’s making you hate your company’s blog. But you’re not alone.
Many tech companies feel they need to blog continually. A regular blog habit is a great way to hone your writing skills and nail the voice that resonates with your target customers.
But ‘regular’ doesn’t need to mean a daily posting schedule. You could just blog once a week and you’d still reap some benefits.
So why should you do all of this hard work? What are the benefits of blogging?
The benefits to you are pretty simple. The more blog posts you publish, the better you get at writing. You’ll also hone the voice you need to talk to your customers or users.
It’s also a numbers game – you stand a better chance at getting those elusive social shares, and the more posts you put out there, the more chances you have for your customers to see them. I’m not saying you should put out just any content. But ten well-written, optimised blog posts are better than one.
Don’t forget, customers often need to see your name 7 times (or more) before they think of you when they want to buy. They also need the chance to get to know you in order to trust you. Your blog provides those opportunities.
Not only that, but it’s good for your SEO. WordPress developer Robert Ryan ran an experiment in which he stopped blogging for 251 days. In that time, he dropped from the top spot for his chosen keyword to 6th place in the search engine results. Given the top spot in Google gets an average of 36.4% of search traffic, and no.6 only gets 4.1%, that’s a massive drop.
Organic traffic fell by a whopping 42%. His overall site conversions dropped by 28%.
All because he stopped blogging.
OK. So you get why you should blog regularly. But how do you find time?
Here are five simple ways to find time for your startup’s blog. And I know they work because I use all of them!
1) Think beyond long form posts
You’ve no doubt read all of the blog posts that say ‘size matters’. From an SEO point of view, long-form posts perform better than short posts (i.e. those less than 1000 words).
Studies have shown that posts over 1000 words long receive more shares and backlinks. Translated into English; more people seeing your content, and Google pushing your site up the search results because those backlinks prove you’re a trusted publisher.
But you might not have the time to write a 2000 word post every week. Luckily, it’s okay to give your users or customers other types of content that have their own value.
Remember. Your blog can be entertaining or inspirational as much as it can be educational.
So mix those long-form posts in with other types of content, including photo posts taking your customers behind the scenes of your startup. Post tutorials to help them get the best out of your solution. Show them how to do something that doesn’t require your solution…but your solution makes it faster.
You can reuse videos from Facebook Live or Youtube. Embed the videos into posts (as I did in this post on using strategy for your blog). Pay for transcription and put the scripts underneath (this is great for SEO). Host podcasts and the accompanying show notes on your blog.
Don’t worry about repeating yourself. Not everyone will follow you on every platform. And it’s good to have everything in one place.
2) Find time in small snippets
You’re a busy person. So it’s difficult to find an hour or two to write that week’s blog post.
But it’s much easier to find time in snippets of 10-20 minutes.
You might find it;
- Between meetings
- During your morning coffee
- On your commute
- Even in the gym (dictation can be your friend on the treadmill)
No matter where you find time, make sure you use it. In one snippet, you can write down bullet points to expand later. In another, you can craft the introduction. Elsewhere, you might locate images for the post. Later that day, you might write several calls-to-action until you find the right one.
However you do it, you’ve managed to compose a blog post across several sessions. Does the reader need to know you did that? No. They just need to read your post. And now they can!
Grab my checklist below to find out how I write blog posts.
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3) Stop thinking of your blog as a sales tool
It’s unlikely that you’ll make a sale from a first-time visitor to your blog. Before you close the browser tab and leave this post, let me explain.
Your blog is not your entire sales funnel. It’s often the entry to the funnel instead. The content exists to get eyeballs on your website. Sure, you might have diehard existing users that read everything you post. They’re the ones who’ll share it on social media and bring in new visitors.
(Think social media is dying? Check out these social media marketing stats and think again!)
But that random person who stumbles across you from a Google search? They don’t know who you are. So they might not know they have a problem yet. If they do, they’re not sure how you provide the solution.
Yet.
Draw them in with your blog – so your content can be fun, informative, educational, helpful, or just plain awesome. Teach them, make them laugh, inflame their passions – but make them do something. Then get them to sign up to your email list so you can send them future posts.
Remember that 47% of buyers view between 3 and 5 pieces of content before they speak to a sales rep.
That first post they view just has to get them onto your list. It doesn’t have to make them buy straightaway.
4) Make your blog a priority
Sad thing is, unless you make your blog a priority, you’ll keep finding excuses not to find time. You know why you need to blog. You probably even want to blog.
But your blog needs to be a key factor on your to-do list. Not a holdover item that skips from one week to the next without getting done.
You might schedule blog time on your calendar. Set aside half an hour once a week to draft your posts, the same way you’d block in a meeting. You can always polish them later in the week – but at least you have the draft to start with.
5) Stop writing posts every week
This may sound controversial but the easiest way to find time to write is to write less often. Much of the accepted wisdom around blogging is that you need quality content, rather than lots of content.
Maybe you drop your posting schedule to once a fortnight. Perhaps you write one long-form post a month, but you supplement with other content, such as podcast show notes or Facebook Live videos in the other weeks.
You need to find the schedule that works best for you. One company might find it easy to create a blog post responding to industry changes or future predictions every week. Another company might prefer to take longer, creating thought leader pieces once a month.
Whichever option you go for, make creating content a priority on your to-do list and stick to your schedule.
Alternatively…
If you still don’t feel you can devote the time to your blog, let me handle it for you. I have 4 spots available for my retainer services so click here to secure your spot. I’m standing by!
