What Happens If You Don’t Blog Frequently?
Posted by James Cooper on Thu, Mar 24, 2011
If you’re interested to learn what may happen if you stop blogging or if you don’t blog frequently, you might be interested to learn the results from my recent Blogging Frequency Test. Actually, it was more like a total No Online Marketing Activity Test; a 3 month hiatus which removed not just blogging daily from our marketing activities, but social media engagement & email marketing. No blogging, no twitter, no linkedin, no facebook, no email marketing. The online impacts and results are interesting. Let me explain.
Ok, so this is my first blog article in 90 days. The last article I wrote was posted on Tuesday the 21st of December 2010, today our article is posting on Thursday 24th of March 2011. 90 something days, whatever.
Why Did We Try a Non-Activity Period for Online Marketing?
We’ll, for a start the amount of time this frees up is phenomenal! Consider mimosaPLANET’s stated Vision “Freedom of choice for business owners accross the globe through knowledge & actions”, there is not a lot of freedom in 15 hours a week focused on online marketing. I believe very firmly in the need for more small businesses to serve the owner far better than they do currently, so... I want to know how small business owners can get the best results from the least amount of time invested, hence the test.
Furthermore, I just was interested to see what would happen, and take this information and see if it helps other business owners in some way.
And lastly, I took 8 weeks off (6 weeks of Summer fun back in New Zealand & 2 weeks to drive the Pacific Coast Highway in California from LA to San Francisco then down to Las Vegas & San Diego). Maybe you should try unplugging for a little while? You might find a new perspective or insight or two that can improve your business no end. In fact, I didn’t even check email for about 6 weeks. If you like the idea of learning some lessons on Time Management or Lifestyle Design have a read of through the articles we have available.
The main point; your business should serve you, you should not be a slave to your business, so does all this “new media” help that cause or hinder it?
To keep things simple let us just look at what happened to the number of website Visits. After all the basic purpose of online marketing activity is to drive visits to your website and to generate a conversion to a lead or new opportunity or sale, so let’s start by looking at the start of this funnel; visits.
The Analytics
Graph 1 – Website Visits by Month – All Sources
Graph 2 – Website Visits by Month– Organic Search Only
Graph 3 – Website Visits by Month – Referrals Only
Graph 4 – Website Visits by Month – Email Marketing Only
Graph 5 – Website Visits by Month – Social Media Only
Trends Before Non-Activity Period
Up until we stopped all our marketing activities on the 21st of Dec 2010 you can see we had been consistently trending upwards for visits from all sources.
It is also important to note;
- we were posting blog articles 5 days a week for about 6 months,
- we were very active with strong social media engagement in Nov & Dec (until the 21st).
Effects of Non-Activity Period
- A clear drop in Social Media Visits from Dec 21st onwards.
- A clear drop in Email Marketing Visits from Dec 21st onwards.
- Overall Visits in December would likely have been just as high as November if we had continued Social Media & Email Marketing Activities.
- Organic Search & Referral Visits for Jan & Feb & first two thirds of March are Higher.
We got a shot in the arm from a couple of extra high quality links to mimosaPLANET.com in the last day or two of December. This did a couple of things; i) it sent direct referrals higher from these high ranking sites in Jan & Feb, and ii) it drove a large increase in organic results by improving our standing with google. So, this largely overcame the virtual complete removal of visits from email marketing or social media during the 3 month period.
What Does This Mean?
Did we slow up our online growth (number of visits & number of leads) by stopping the daily blogging & other modern marketing activities? Yeah sure. Did we go backwards? Not really all that much. Why? Because of months of hard work with previous marketing activities helped us get a few quality links that mean sooo much. Did I personally enjoy 3 months of being unplugged? Yep!
Will I continue to blog daily from today onwards for the foreseeable future? Yes. Will I ramp up our social media engagement? Yes. Why? Because we wouldn’t of got these results without it, and we’d be mad to stop online marketing forever right now, there are heaps more people that have never heard about mimosaPLANET that we can help, and we can use the momentum we have built over the last few years to get even higher reach and exposure online. Think compounding.
What we don’t know just yet is reader & contact database feedback. Will people be pissed off that we stopped online engagement for 3 months? Maybe. Will some have forgot us? Maybe. Will we have lost leads & sales? Sure. Will we still provide value for those that re-engage with us? Yes… and that is the point I think. There is still a mountain of content we have available online for people, and people have continuously had access to, regardless of whether we’ve been adding new stuff over the last 3 months, or there to comment instantly. Will some people love the fact that we haven’t fallen off the face of the earth and we are back helping out in our small way? Sure. Will other people think that I’m a vulgar person who is selfish and has burnt all bridges? I’d hope not, but probably yes.
So, if you don’t blog frequently, what happens?
The answer… it depends, but I can assure you that regular blogging long term will be worth it for most businesses. Remember once you post something online it is there (hopefully) forever. You get to compound your results over time. Blogging frequently is smart for long term business results.
Let me know what you think?
Action Points
If you’re in camp A: I never/rarely blog or interact on social media:
- Start doing it, it is not the immediate marketing ROI that is the huge thing to consider, it is the compounding affect of doing it for 2 years which catapults your business to niche stardom and with it… improved results. Lose the loser attitude of, ‘I don’t have time’ or ‘that’s a waste of time’, that kind of thinking won’t help you. Think instead, ‘how can I make this work’.
- Review LinkedIn Process
- Review Twitter Process
If you’re in camp B: I blog daily/live on social media:
- Stop doing it for a week or two or even 3 months, the world will not end. You can start back up again & continue on. During the free time you created from taking this break from online marketing activities you can either; i) do nothing - which will increase your attitude, smarts & energy by having a refreshing break, or ii) finally launch that project you’ve not had time to do – get it done!
NOTE: I totally understand that there will be a group of people out there that will say “when you stop activity & engagement you lose predictability, the relationship, consistency, expertise and vital trust…. etc… with your target audience”. You know what, I agree, I completely agree. But just remember for a second, why the heck are you doing all this marketing stuff in the first place? What is your Ultimate goal? Not your business sales target, your ultimate personal goal? Greater personal freedom of choice perhaps?
