“Use it or lose it!”
It’s a statement that can be applied to many aspects of life – not the least of which is building an online business.
I discovered this the hard way recently with one of my email lists – in fact the newsletter associated with this very blog here at ProBlogger.
Over two years ago I was sending out weekly newsletters to readers of this blog. They contained updates from the site, a few extra tips exclusive for subscribers, the odd competition, the occasional promotion and a bit of behind the scenes information on what I was doing.
The emails were converting well in terms of driving traffic and building community with readers and they even drove some affiliate sales from time to time. It was something well worth doing…..
But then I stopped.
I can’t really put my finger on why I stopped (it was a gradual thing and something I intended to get back to ) – perhaps it was because I started doing some of what I’d been doing in newsletters on Twitter, perhaps it was because I was simply getting too busy, or perhaps I was just getting lazy…. for whatever reason – I stopped sending weekly newsletters. In fact they slowed down to a point where I was lucky if I were sending them out every six months.
The problem is – six months is too long to go between newsletters. If you don’t use it – you lose it.
Six months without contact with subscribers is not a great way to build brand, trust, relationship, familiarity – it means that when you do send something it’s less likely to be read.
People forget they subscribed, people are more likely to view you with suspicion, people could feel slighted.
Some might call it letting your list go ‘cold‘ – I call it a big mistake.
It meant that when I recently restarted my newsletter that a large percentage of those who had subscribed were inactive, unresponsive and a few were quite angry about me emailing them because they had little idea why I was sending them emails out of the blue!
The same principle applies in other places too.
- Blogging/RSS Feeds – I recently spoke with a blogger who decided to take 12 months off blogging – he returned expecting traffic and reader engagement to pick up where he left off – he was surprised to find that while Feedburner still reported him as having subscribers that it was like starting again in building traffic.
- Social Media – people often describe using social media as developing a ‘presence’. Problem is – when you’re not actually ‘present’ for any length of time that ‘presence’ is hard to build. Whether it be on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn – when you let your account become inactive – in time the relationships that you have with those that you’ve previously connected with can go ‘cold’.
I guess it’s pretty much the same as real life – when you disappear unexpectedly from a circle of friends it can be a little awkward coming back to them – it sometimes takes time for the friendships to ‘warm up’ again.
5 Lessons to Help You Keep ‘Using It’ – Not ‘Losing It’
A few quick tips on keeping thing going – whether it be your blog, newsletter, Twitter account etc.
1. Don’t bite off more than you can chew
The temptation in this game is to commit to being active in too many places at once. Newsletters, Twitter, Blog, Facebook, Forums, LinkedIn…. and when you have more than one blog – multiply the accounts that you might potentially have!
In most cases it is better to do a few things well than to do many things poorly.
2. Regularity is more important than High Frequency
When asked ‘how much should I post on my blog’ I generally answer with ‘regularly’ and with ‘regularity’.
In my experience the actual frequency of posting doesn’t tend to matter as much as the ‘regularity’ of your posts. Bloggers tend to get into trouble when they move from posting at one level and then changing their frequency. Going from 3 posts a week to 5 posts a day is going to aggravate some of your readers. Going from 5 posts a day to once a month is also going to have a detrimental impact.
Post as regularly as you are able to sustain and try to develop a pattern to it so that readers know what to expect.
3. Under Promise and Over Deliver
If you’re not sure how much of something you’re able to sustain – pull back not he promises you make.
If you’re starting an email newsletter and you ‘hope’ to make it weekly but wonder if you can keep that up – advertise it as being ‘at least every month’ or every second week.
I guess it’s about identifying what the minimum is that you need to do to keep your list/blog/social media presence ‘warm’ and at least sticking to that as a minimum rather than attempting to do more than you can realistically do.
4. Build a Schedule
I used to be very impulsive in my online business. These days I’m much more reliant upon schedules. I set myself deadlines for blog posts, newsletters, forum interaction, social media interactions…. and more.
I still don’t achieve them all but without a schedule areas of what I do would fall dormant very quickly.
5. Have Someone (or Something) Manage You
Extending the schedule strategy is that I like to be ‘managed’ by someone or something.
This means that I have people around me who ‘remind’ (or tell) me when I need to do certain things.
‘Darren you need to get a newsletter out today’ is something I heard last Thursday from one of the people involved in my photography site.
‘Darren here are 3 threads you need to respond to in the forum’ is something that Lara told me earlier today (we use Basecamp to send these type of reminders/to do tasks).
I also set up systems for these type of alerts.
I use iCal on my mac and iPhone to set up alerts at certain intervals to remind/tell me to do certain tasks. These range from monthly alerts to pay affiliates, to weekly alerts to send newsletters, to daily alerts to have certain articles written by.
I do have some internal alerts too – by this I mean that I know before I go to bed each night that I need to have 3 posts set to go off on my blogs while I sleep. I don’t need to set myself an alert for these because its just what I do each day – they’ve become automatic internalized rhythms.
What do You Do?
How do you keep your blogging and other activities regular so that you don’t let things go cold? Looking forward to reading some of how you approach this.
Hmm, those are some nice tips. I use these too. I have another method to it.
There are some times, where I have ample time in my hand, and I want to write. I write some posts and schedule them to be posted automatically later on. And that helps a lot too.
I am planning to keep using the same strategy on my new blog:
http://mybusinesslistings.blogspot.com/
Let’s see how it goes.
Hello Darren, Brilliant post! Something I have funnily enough recently started focusing on. As my blog is extremely new I wanted to get in a routine before I got into bad habbits. So what I did was buy a diary, so I set my clear tasks for the day and make sure I complete them, it works extremely well because it starts forming a routine. Currently I post 3 times a week, which is well in my comfort zone, but in the near future, aslong as I feel comfortable I will look at increasing this!
http://www.studentspayless.com
I simply set a schedule and my readers know that every 4 to 5 days, they can expect something from my blog.
Also, I think your frequency should depend on your readership. A blog like problogger can afford to put out posts on a daily basis, whereas some blogs might flounder under the weight.
That’s why blogging is so great. each person can have success even though they go about doing it in very distinct and unique ways.
Thanks for the article, Darren.
Love this post, Darren — right back to the brass tacks.
I’ve gone through long spells of great regularity in my blogging, but I’ve also had months (and longer periods) when everything was too haphazard. “Catch as catch can” definitely is NOT the way to build a connection to an audience, or even to figure out what the nature of that audience is.
With the start of the new year, I’ve gone back to basics myself, committing to at least one post every day on my personal blog, and at least one post per weekday on my business blog. No big deal, no particular length requirement, no specific traffic targets for now — just something every day. That takes some of the pressure off.
I track my progress in a spreadsheet, and every consecutive day in this string gets highlighted in blue, so that my momentum shows up visually right there on the screen. (This is a trick I stole from Jerry Seinfeld.) I’d hate to miss a day, because then the streak would be dead, and I’d have to take away the blue highlights and start all over again. That puts the right amount of pressure back on.
“Regularity is more important than High Frequency”
That statement alone is really the key. No matter what you do, pick a schedule and stick to it. Even if it is only posting once a week or twice a month. Your readers will come to expect this schedule and will know when you don’t stick to it.
Thanks Darren, These are things that I have been pondering and thinking about over the last month. I am a relatively new blogger but want to grow my readership and I know consistency is a large part of this. These are great guidelines and this post helps give me some direction. Thanks so much!
Don’t bite off more than you can chew
it’s really important to do one thing at a time…
jack of all trade is a master of nothing.
thanks,
-Nhoel of http://keywordspeak.com
Darren, this is just something i was thinking about today as I got a regular guest-posting offer in my email and I wondered what kind of commitment I could realistically make w.r.t. frequency. I’m also setting up a newsletter and intend to keep it once a month, rather than try and over-achieve at this early stage in the game.
I find that when I HAVE to write X number of posts every week, my inspiration tends to dry off. So instead I keep a diary with article ideas and write one whenever I have the time, energy, inspiration to do it. Of course my blog is only about 2 months old so I can get away with it at this point. But I hope to establish a more regular routine when I take up blogging more seriously.
I have a simple goal of making 15-20 posts a month, which makes around 1 post every second day. I try to have at least 1-2 my own tweets on Twitter every day.
I don’t have a schedule written or laid out anywhere specifically, but like you said, I have an internal rythm – “Read your favorite blogs: 1-2 hours” “Get out and do some backlinking: 2-3 hours” “Participate in forums and groups: 1-2 hours” and finally make a blog post every 2nd day on average.
It doesn’t go in that order every day, because when I go by the same routine every day, I get bored and sloppy, lazy, and I start to procrastinate and delay my duties.
I still don’t have a newsletter, but those few (RSS) followers that subscribed to my blog I tend to keep them coming back to my blog as much as I can.
I think this is just the time of year that everyone needs this wake up call. Thank you so much!
Agree Darren, loved this post. I’ve also bookmarked it and tweeted about it. Thanks a lot.
http://www.dumblittleblogger.com/
Thank you Darren, for yet another useful, thought-provoking post! You don’t know how big an inspiration you’ve been to me! Your TwiTips post from a little more than a year ago about the “Ten People All Twitter Beginners Should be Following,” was one of the first articles I read as a newcomer to SocMed, and it totally opened my eyes to what Twitter is all about.
And again, you hit the nail right on the head with this post. Although I only got started with Twitter in late 2008, I’ve been blogging since 2004. My biggest problem has ALWAYS been consistency. Now I’m writing two blogs, so, as you say, double that problem!
I will take your suggestions to heart and hopefully solve my own “boy who cried ‘wolf’ issues and rebuild my readership over the coming year.
I just wanted to comment to say thanks for all you do in being the epitome of the true, ‘PRO’ Blogger! Keep up the great work!
Very interesting article here!!! I keep wondering what I can do to make this more entertaining … advice I have received follows along the same lines as your message here. I just need to keep plugging along, I read from your words …
I am barely new to blogging but I really taking to heart consistency since I have to get my blog of the ground with Great content.
I don’t think it should matter much once it takes off, but that’s just my opinion.
I think people understand unless you are running a behemoth blog with 20 blogger to write for you, you are not always going to be able to write them interesting articles everyday.
If you are giving them a unique article a week they will find you more valuable.
I think psycologically I would think a blog that only posted once a week is really taking their time to write that post.
thanks for the post darren
I started my blog with the desire to post everyday, but I see that it just is not really necessary. I am starting to post every other day depending on what is going on in the industry. I still try to post any crazy updates if they happen. I usually just write most of my posts in a few days and then schedule them out to keep them routine. I usually get in a writing mode for a bit, so it is easy for me to write multiple posts.
Definitely important. Even the short break over the holidays killed some of my momentum.
There’s not doubt that consistency is important. When a blog shows up in my RSS reader once a month or less it just tends to annoy me.
Be schedulers seems can work great to improve our reputation in blogosphere.
Great post Darren, thank you. I have been using outlook for reminders and scheduling, but I am liking the looks of Basecamp, thanks for that idea.
I think the most valuable thing here is getting someone else involved and holding you accountable. We are our best boss, we are not as hard on ourselves. Great tip.
These are great tips! I’ve really started to increase my post count by I’m trying to slow down the pace of the increase so that those who follow my posts don’t get aggravated to quickly and become used to the increase as it happens.
For me thinking of this analogy as helped: Blogging is like a marriage. In the newlywed phase you do everything a lot, then you can settle into a routine. Sometimes if you take for granted the routine you fall into & start to just assume the relationship will stay the same when really the relationship will collapse if you don’t put for daily effort. It might not be that you blog daily but you connect in other ways that are consistent & show you care about your craft. You connect & make the connection matter because what you are doing matters to you as do the people who are kind enough to actually read it.
nice analogy Beth – blogging is like a marriage….
great post! I agree with tom’s comment from studentspayless. i am trying to establish good habits before bad ones emerge. I am trying to decide on a schedule for my blog right now. My thoughts when I started was to write on a schedule. But being a very busy working mom I find that I don’t have a lot of time to write and I pretty much write when I can.
But…I am keeping a blog journal. I carry it everywhere with me. So if something pops in my head I just write it down. SO when I actually get a minute to blog I just pull out my notebook.
So my focus this week is to get my blogging much more organized.
Having someone to kick your a.. to get to work is always a working solution. It’s a fact, that changing the frequency of posts is for many readers a very disturbing thing. Readers want a continous flow and want to know how often they have to visit you – even if they got the news presentet via RSS-Feeds as they come up.
I am running a blog for quite a wile about my travels. Since a sailor not always has an internt at hand I am more regular when there is a wlan at a harbour and less active if I have to find other locations to access the internet. Changing back from a monthly to a weekly post level is always feels like a restart of the site. It turned out to be very useful to have someone keeping readers on the site by posting some Updates like positions or simply answering comments on behalf.
I’m starting to feel the need to schedule myself more recently.
Those are some excellent tips that I’ll start trying to take on board.
When I started blogging I signed up for every social media network I could find and now I can’t even remember what half of them were let alone being an active member!
This post really couldn’t come at a better time for me. I was just kicking myself for getting so behind with my posts on my social media/internet marketing blog (http://thesocialrobot.com) and these tips really seem like they could help me. I think I just need to get into a schedule of posting, or do all my posts sunday night and schedule them to be posted throughout the week.
I use Google Calendar to schedule my time. I’ll typically have quite a few tasks on there each day, but I know that there are two things I absolutely must do no matter what: spend time with my family and write a blog post. Every other thing can be canceled if need be, but I don’t go to bed until those two are done. Basically, I prioritize and commit.
Of course, I do also “try” to write one extra post each week that I schedule for the future. That way I can build up a store of posts that I can rely on during vacation. (Because I also believe that occasional breaks are helpful. They just shouldn’t be breaks that ate visible to my readers.)
I just contributed a post to blissfullydomestic.com (Learning/Blogging cat) and used the same term: Use it or Lose It in regards to speeding up a site’s load time!
Because I am a student, it is sometimes hard to keep up my blogging schedule. I do have a schedule of how many posts I want each day, how many video posts, when to write posts, etc., but because my homework varies, it is extremely hard to keep up with. For that reason, I have an entire team of associates bloggers (though since I personally know them, I don’t actually pay them any money; they’re happy to do it for free) who I e-mail each day asking them if they’ve read a book recently (Book reviews is a big part of my blog), have a writing tip (that’s another big part), or know of any books that they don’t have the time to read but they’ve heard good things about. I also schedule posts a lot and hold these guest posts in the wings until I need a post or when it’s their turn to post. Not optimal, no, but it’s the best I can do at the moment.
I agree regularity is key to a successful newsletter campaign, but I also notice that a lot of bloggers send too many updates and I end up having to unsubscribe. Why? Because I already read their blog and I don’t want to be bombarded with affiliate links and “special” deals.
Then there are those that do it just right and I look forward to hearing from them once or twice a month. :)
Ms Freeman – too much updating is the other side of the coin and something that needs to be thought through carefully. The #1 reasons people unsubscribe from blogs is too many posts (at least it was in a poll I ran a while back).
very good advice, it’s just it’s too difficult to stick to something for a long time.
Time management is so important therefore we should make our daily schedule. We have to accomplish each objective before doing something else
Two items that stand out here:
Under Promise and Over Deliver and Regularity is more important than High Frequency. Both very important, not just in the blogging world, but it applies to pretty much any other industry or field.
If you continue to be consistent, you will see results, thats a fact.
Some best practices that we use is look for new angles or approaches to keep it interesting for our members and readers. Small things that might not seem significant at the time takes you a long way
Great post. I agree, regularity is essential when blogging. I think quality is much more important than quantity, though. Personally, I’m much more likely to follow a blogger who writes one excellent post a week than another who posts every day just for the sake of it.
I think the concepts here apply to more than just blogging. Any skill you have you will lose if you do not use it. Even when playing a sport, if you practice daily you will improve at it dramatically. But if you take a ton of time off, you will make backwards progress.
I’m trying to decide one everything I need to do each day, and make a schedule to do so. Does anyone know of any good PC software, which is free, that I can use to keep a schedule.
Thanks for any help
Darren,
I think the challenge of keeping the blogging regular goes clear back to your blog’s inception. Is the theme of the blog something you would want to write about even if you didn’t have to write about it? Is the topic the type of thing you think about when you don’t have to think about anything else?
If we can answer “yes” to these questions, the challenge won’t be so great. If we answer “no,” then the work is cut out for us!
Thanks!
I use a weekly battle plan and then narrow that down to the tasks that need to be done daily to meet the weekly plan.
I haven’t used iCal yet. Good idea.
Sheila
Sheila Atwood – ooh, a weekly battle plan is a great idea…. love that terminology :-)
I find that both in my work life and my personal life (think honey-do list), my creativity and procrastination level comes and goes. When I first started my blog, I would have lots of ideas and then post one after another. When my creativity level was gone, I would sometimes have gaps in my content.
I then decided to keep more posts as drafts and only publish the content on a regular basis. I agree with you that this helps the readers to know when to expect content.
It is still a work in progress and thanks for the tips above!
Calvin @ http://www.MakingMoneyOnlineMethods.com
I’ve compiled a staff of about 10 writers. There’s new content on the site every day, but I only write 3-4 times most weeks.
I have tasks set up in my outlook and I have a blog schedule in my BusyBodyBook. Between the two.. oh, plus I have a daily to do list. So, between the 3, I get plenty of reminders to get stuff done. :-) I am a VERY busy mom of 3 little boys, so I need all the reminders I can get to keep me from getting too side-tracked with them. :-)
Hi Darren,
I especially like your third point.
Under Promise and Over Deliver
You can apply this to multiple disciplines.
It’s better to surprise someone with better work than that they expect.
But how can you handle all these sites: (Twitter, Blog, Facebook, Forums, LinkedIn)? Afterall, you have to work too.
And according to Timothy Ferriss, you can do this in 4 hours per week. See the book: The four hour work week.
Well, I have been using Twitter Feed which posts my blog entries to both Facebook and Twitter. Also there are many social networking platforms which just link to one another. For example, LinkedIn allows you to post your Twitter post as your status on LinkedIn.
So essentially, I am using Twitter Feed to post in three places at the same time :) Seems to be working well and saves a bunch of time. I don’t even have to think about Tweeting about my post – Twitter Feed does it automatically.
Best,
Tomas
Regularity and over delivering is really the key to have a successful blog, building your own schedule helps you to make blogging regular
Hi Darren
My blog is 8 months old. I didn’t think I could blog every day when I first started. I started out once a week, pushed it to 3 times a week and now I blog 5-7 times a week. I discovered the more I blogged, the more I material there was to blog about. Now, I have no lack of topics. My niche market is genealogy. I find it important to schedule topics so 3 out of 5 posts I try to stick to themes, such as beginners basics, writing a family history book and online genealogy learning. The other 2 posts are for articles that fall outside of these themes, and if I get up to 7 posts well that usually is because some hot news relevant to the genealogy industry has happened that I feel I must comment on. This works for me, now. However, I think the lesson is the more we blog the more we evolve and therefore so does our blog.
Too much too soon invaluable information here for me. Scheduling my writing, posting with regularity, and analyzing content- I contend with, but I’m happy to be around. I’m learning. Been to blogging barely few months. Thank you for this information-rich blog. I really need help for tips on quality time blogging.
Hey, Darren, my editorial calendar rules my blogging life. I use Google Calendar to assign tasks and, like you, try to set up posts for the next day. What’s interesting, is that I don’t schedule my social activity because it’s always been a part of my life in general. So, I don’t have much of a problem getting on Facebook and Twitter and updating.
One thing that helps me is to choose on 3 things I know I can regularly update such as Facebook, Twitter, and my blog. I stick to those and crush my daily tasks. I don’t get caught up in using too many social networking platforms.
Lastly, interacting on other blogs tends to be the thing that gets done the least by me. So what I’ve been doing lately is, if I’m going to share an article on Twitter that someone posted, I comment first then share it.
Being Regular as you say is the key some times . I get busy some times and those are the times when I use some guest bloggers to blog for me ..But this has to be done all in advance . End minute thing is really hard to do ..
You’re so right Darren, especially about biting off more than one could chew.
With the way blogging has evolved in recent years, there’s so much pressure to do this and that that it’s easy to get overwhelmed and then start underperforming, at the cost of readers and subscribers.
Thanks for discussing this because there was a lesson in there for all of us.
I plan to adhere to strict schedules this year with daily, weekly and monthly objectives. I find it makes it easier for me to focus on what I need to do and to get it done.
I started a calendar exactly like the ones I use for my kids’ weekly chores. You don’t work, you don’t get any allowance!
Wow, this post could not be more timely for me. I am just procrastinating about sending out my newsletter, which is just once a month updates on whats new etc.
The ironic thing is that my niche is time management, and I have just done a whole section on procrastination, and here I am – procrastinating! Ok heading off to rip off the band-aid!