The Trouble With Blogging
January 24th, 2012 by Bob Bly
I used to get 12 to 15 comments or more on my blog posts.
Then, I was silent for 3 months.
When I returned to blogging this month, I got only 3 to 5 comments per post.
You can make the case that my lack of blogging for months diminished my readership.
And that’s the problem with blogging.
To maintain the recommended frequency of posts, bloggers write blog articles even if they have nothing to say.
And the result is drivel. As Willy Nelson says, “You can’t make a record if you ain’t got nothing to say.”
What happens when I have no news, information, or thoughts to impart?
Should I blog for the sake of keeping up with blogging?
Or should I be silent until a worthy idea occurs?
This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 at 11:53 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 24th, 2012 at 1:28 pm
What does your page stats look like? Are you also getting fewer hits than before?
I read several blogs using RSS feeds. For me it is not a problem if a blogger stops posting for a while – I won’t even notice. But if someone starts posting “drivel” I will very quickly delete the feed, and never come back.
January 24th, 2012 at 3:52 pm
I believe in quality over quantity when it comes to blogging Bob.
January 24th, 2012 at 4:32 pm
Bob,
Believe in quality but a man as experienced and such a great writer. I would love if you would document some of your client’s you work on, what you try to accomplish.?
Obviously no names, but think you may be too hard on yourself.
January 24th, 2012 at 5:13 pm
Bob:
This is something I’ve been dwelling on lately as well. All the content marketing “experts” will tell you that the way to successfully market is to:
1) come up with a unique, different, new way of looking at things and write/video/talk about that.
2) promote that everywhere.
3) reap the rewards.
What if you don’t have something new/unique/different to say?
Like you say, that’s the problem with blogging – especially if it’s not your main gig. Sure, if all you have to do is digest content and think about something different to say about it, you can keep up with a schedule.
If that’s not your only responsibility, it gets a little dicier.
Kevin
January 24th, 2012 at 7:54 pm
Oh well.
SNL would probably have better skits if they only aired the show every other week, but they do it every week because the medium thrives on regularity.
Ya just gotta deal with what you’ve got.
January 25th, 2012 at 3:56 pm
I hope everything is ok Bob and no major dramas, if that is th case. Ten what’s up man, are you telling me you have nit been up to anything at all worthy of sharing?
January 25th, 2012 at 6:19 pm
Everything I have read about SEO, getting “noticed” on the web says that we must spend our day blogging and maintaining our Facebook page and sending out press releases. Who the hell has time to do that? I certainly don’t. And small business owners everywhere are realizing that their presence on Facebook and blogging has not been all that profitable and their pulling off. And I’m one of them…and my client list has grown substantially because I’m able to give my attention where it belongs.
January 29th, 2012 at 3:09 pm
When bloggers stop blogging (or appear to do so), followers often stop following. Once we market ourselves to readers as a dependable resource for information, news, opinions and general mental stimulation, we have to set up a schedule we can reliably meet, otherwise we become known as “that guy who once had something relevant to say but no longer does.” So in that sense, blogging can work against us.
If my imagination fails to hand me a blog-worthy subject when I need it, I put on my journalist hat and go digging. There’s always something interesting out there that would never have occurred to me on my own. Interviewing clients or creative partners, or allowing them to guest-blog on your site, is another way to fill the gaps with something more than empty filler. Getting a second person involved can also fuel the creative fire. I blog for a variety of business owners, many of whom have no idea what they want to blog about until our casual chat yields fresh ideas.
My two cents.
January 30th, 2012 at 5:38 pm
[...] The Trouble With Blogging [...]
January 30th, 2012 at 7:52 pm
Our colleague Marcia Yudkin talks about this in her article: Must Everyone Blog? Absolutely not.
But I love your posts, Bob. Missed you when you were quiet.
February 4th, 2012 at 3:56 pm
Someone I met recently put it in a way that spoke to me: creativity thrives within constraints. I see the pressure to post with some regularity as a constraint. It keeps me constantly on the lookout for interesting trends and stories to share. I keep draft posts saved in the blog and on my computer until I hit a moment of inspiration (or just need to post) and bang out all my thoughts.
I guess it just depends on who you are. Some of us smaller guys only have the good content + regular posting to help build our audience. Guys like you? You’ve got fans
February 4th, 2012 at 7:34 pm
I like a good blog. The quality is important and blogging is also useful if you sell information products. You can also indulge in some content curation or get some guest bloggers.
Dan Kennedy also stopped blogging. I miss his blog.
Cheers,
Scott Martin
February 5th, 2012 at 12:28 pm
I went silent for a year! Just getting back into it now. It was the exact same problem–I just felt like I didn’t have anything to say just then. Has my readership suffered? Definitely…I haven’t even looked at my stats. But this seems to be going around lately.
Personally, I think you probably hurt your brand more by posting “drivel” than by going offline for a while. One way I dealt with it in the past was having a regular schedule that wasn’t every day–I posted three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. My readers knew when to expect me but it wasn’t as demanding as an every-day schedule.
February 5th, 2012 at 10:30 pm
Sounds to me like you still have something to say. I hope to a get blog set up in the near future on some aspect of writing, and reading real time challenges like you’ve posted here, is real inspiration.
Thank you.
Perhaps a little more attention to the marketing side would help.
February 6th, 2012 at 11:23 pm
The curious thing I’ve noticed with my blog is that half of the time I don’t know what I am going to write about before I sit down. So far, I haven’t written drivel. But I think that is because I am genuinely interested in my topic. If I was just blogging for the sake of blogging, it would probably suck.
February 7th, 2012 at 5:45 am
[...] Source [...]
February 7th, 2012 at 11:16 am
I have a hard time coming up with things to write about.I am going to start researching before i write.Maybe then i can write something that others want to read.
February 7th, 2012 at 12:09 pm
Thank you for your comment re blogging. I completely agree, since I have often questioned its purpose. If it is drawing folks to your site, and you are able to sell more product, great. Personally, I have only a certain amount of time, and frankly, I want bang for the buck in terms of my efforts.
February 7th, 2012 at 7:16 pm
I like a lot of the posts to this topic, especially the ones about having more than one blogger. Seems like we are mostly flying solo so for many of us we are too much into our own heads, we can get stale. My blog is just starting so it’s real thin and I am spending most of my time “prospecting” for businesses that want me to blog for them (Any suggestion, BTW).
A Sales Trainer, who will remain nameless once said in one of his classes “When you steal an idea from one person it’s “plagiarism”, when you steal an idea from a bunch of people it’s “research”. As a blogger (I am too new to be considered little more than a scribbler) I can see that a good deal of the information we blog about is re-hash anyway. Hopefully, I will be posting good, useful, information on my blog that entertains, informs, educates and otherwise is looked forward to by the readers. I can see where there is so much information on the Internet we will never come close to consuming even 1%. I hope I can give my readers the information they like, need and will re-post to FB, etc.
Good Luck everyone
February 13th, 2012 at 5:00 pm
Why not link to other people who are saying interesting things at the moment? Maybe drop a provocative question alongside if you have one. Sure, there are other mediums to share stories and spark conversation, but on the blog it goes out to a targeted crowd who’s happy (or, as you imply, hungry) to have a bone thrown at them periodically.
February 22nd, 2012 at 5:41 am
you’ve got an amazing blog right here! would you prefer to make some invite posts on my weblog?
February 22nd, 2012 at 11:59 am
Thanks, Nick, but I barely have time to keep up with my blog, let alone contribute to others, as enjoyable and beneficial as that would be for me.
April 12th, 2012 at 1:48 am
Ashwin has a good idea. I am sure you have many contacts in the copy-writing business. It is quite acceptable to simply link to a useful/interesting post by someone else with a comment on why you think it might be useful.
Curating posts by others is is a well accepted way of staying in front of your users and adding some meaningful comments of your own.
May 5th, 2012 at 9:47 am
upload videos, blogs, polls, albums, meet people, social network, sube videos, conoce gente, red social…
[...]The Trouble With Blogging – bly.com blog – bly.com direct marketing blog[...]…