“It’s Time to Feed the Blog Again”

It's time to feed the dog (blog) again

It’s not easy to feed the blog and keep your content machine nourished, is it?

You’re finding out that providing valuable content to your readers really does take some work, doesn’t it?

Feed the blog? Or feed the dog?

When you were a kid, responsible for the family dog, your mom would holler up the staircase, “Timmy! It’s time to feed the dog again!” You remember that, don’t you? There’s a cosmic reason that “dog” rhymes with “blog,” and your responsibility is nearly the same.

Whether it’s the company blog or a content marketing campaign or even an e-newsletter, somebody has to write the stuff, somebody has to chase the stuff and somebody has to keep it moving along. Those somebodies are usually you, the marketing manager.

You begin to worry. If you haven’t yet seen results, you’re wondering, “When should I pull the plug?” If you are seeing results, you’re wondering, “How long can I keep this up?”

3 things to remember

Keep these things in mind when you get tired of feeding the blog:

  1. You need to work with People Who Love to Write. It’s one thing to hire writers to generate content about your niche technology for deep packet inspection. It’s quite another to ensure they don’t get tired of it in a hurry and run out of things to say and ways in which to say them. People Who Love to Write will not suffer from this disease, especially if you give them new material from which to work.
  2. You need to Write for the Audience. Actually, if you’re not writing for the audience – for its questions and worries and headaches – then what’s the point? You can feed candy to the blog just to see it get fat, or you can feed it something nutritious that will preserve it and increase its value to the audience. Besides, the more you know about your audience, the easier it is to keep your blog fed.
  3. You, your company and your writers need to Write About What You Know About. Also, you need to be prepared to convey it persuasively for months, maybe for years, as described in an article by Lloyd Brown:

    If you try to discuss the benefits of the açai berry when your only knowledge is what you read on another blog, the broader community is going to realize that you have nothing unique to offer. All they have done is burned a little of your bandwidth. Even worse is the abundance of blogs that simply import RSS feeds from other blogs to provide content. If you want visitors to stay longer than a few seconds and return at a later time, you must give them a reason. This means providing original content. The only way you can do this is if you know your subject.

Your blog won’t fetch sticks the way your dog did, but a well-fed one will fetch leads and attention. Better yet, you never need to give it a bath.

photo credit: SpaceRitual

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Author: John White

John White of venTAJA Marketing is a content marketing writer for technology companies. He posts about technology writing from the perspective of the marketing manager. It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. Download his eBook, “10 Questions to Ask When Hiring Your Content Marketing Writer.”