Do you even need a blog?

I wrote 41 posts for the whole year.

And, a majority of them were revisions, not whole new posts. (see The Redwood Strategy for how that works).

So, it begs the question… Do you even need a blog?

One of the biggest reasons for dead blogs are people who felt a sense of failure because they weren’t posting often enough.

They felt they should be posting much more frequently, but life gets in the way. And rather than deal with that guilt, they’ll just stop blogging. Stop trying.

One of the biggest complaints from business owners about blogging is “It takes too much time!”.

And, surely, you CAN have a nice, profitable online business without a blog! Yes, you absolutely can.

In the end, an online business is about traffic and conversion. And, it is easy and far more predictable to just go out and pay for your traffic. If you’re willing to just run ads, there’s no reason why you need a blog.

All that said, you’re far better off having one than not. 🙂 In fact, I believe blogging is one of the most effective forms of marketing there is. But, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. You don’t just publish a post and sit back and watch the sales roll in. You still have to advertise, to promote, etc.

But, the blog is your home base. It is the place where you can create the FUEL with which to advertise. That fuel is content. Content marketing works. There’s no doubt about it. Consider these stats…

• Long form blog posts generate 9X more leads than short form posts.
• Only 55% of bloggers update old posts. Those who do are 74% more likely to get strong results.
• 45% of marketers say blogging is their #1 most important content strategy.
• Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times as many leads.
• Paid content promotion is up 5x since 2014

Stats like this show two things…

1. Blogging works. Clearly.
2. You don’t have to constantly churn out new stuff.

If all you ever do is create blog posts, publish, then move onto the next one… you MAY want to re-think this.

Blogging works. But, it doesn’t have to be high-maintenance.

Spending time crafting long form, value-rich blog posts makes way more sense. But, the you want to take the time to really optimize those posts. You want to circle back and update them regularly.

And to this end, we’re going to be shifting gears here in The Daily.

Last week, I was talking about some productivity stuff. But, we’re now moving into content and blogging.

We’ll be talking about strategies and tactics to make your blog more effective. Simple as that.

You in?

Well, if you’re getting this email, then you are. 🙂 All you have to do is be subscribed to The Daily and you’ll get it all.

(Also, I’m about to hit the publish button on a brand new redwood post on how to craft the perfect blog post. It’s not live yet, but it’s going live shortly.)

Alright, see ya tomorrow. 🙂

– David

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The WP Edge is the official weekly newsletter of the Blog Marketing Academy.