If you are in the process of creating a website for your business, you may be more interested in the aspects of how to build a blog and get some initial readers than in your long term content strategy. However deciding on the type of things you are going to be posting and how regularly is quite key at this time. The first few posts you write will set the tone for your entire blog, and how regularly you add new material will also give any early readers an expectation of how often they should expect new content from you.
A Wave of Early Posts
It is not unusual for bloggers to build more content when they first start so that there is a good base of material there for any visitors to look at, and more content to help with search engine rankings. It also gives more potential for social media shares if you are starting a new Twitter account, LinkedIn or Facebook page for your business alongside the blog. Usually, the best approach for this initial ‘rush’ of content is to write things that are ‘evergreen’, that is, things that have no real time references in them and will be just as relevant if people find them months or even years from now. This is because as yet you don’t have many readers, so you want posts that won’t go ‘out of date’ and will still be interesting to the readers you pick up as you go along.
As you move forward into a more stable and permanent publishing schedule, you may think about including more topical, time constrained content too. Here we take a look at the different effects of topical vs. evergreen posts on your business blog:
Why Have Time Constrained Posts At All?
You may think you would always get more value from your writing efforts by creating content that doesn’t age (within reason, obviously technology and society change and so most things will become ‘old’ eventually in some niches), but there are also some good reasons, once your blog is seeing some activity, to write about more topical things. For one thing, it shows your audience you are a brand who stays on top of developments in your industry, which builds authority, and for another, you can take advantage of trending topics – things people are searching for a lot at any given time.
The Right Balance
The best blogs use both types of post – the evergreen stuff is there to continually win new readers over and give fresh visitors plenty of interesting stuff to read, and the topical content allows you to show you are on the ball and be involved in the discussions about the news everybody is talking about. Becoming a source of information on both the latest things, and more general ones, is what you are aiming for.
Keep an eye on your content as you move forward with your blog, and make sure you cover both areas once you are into your long term publishing schedule.
