I am a bit bias, as a writer, so, for me, the answer is YES. Hopefully, I can shed some light on why I believe now is the time to ramp up your blogging instead of cutting back.
If you’re one of the businesses impacted greatly by the coronavirus and you’re struggling to make ends meet, blogging may be non-essential. In this scenario, it makes sense to cut blogging from your budget.
However, if you have a good cash reserve, you’re employees are working from home, and you know you can easily survive the next 3 to 6 months, blogging simply makes sense.
Why I Believe You Should Blog During the Coronavirus
There are several reasons why I believe you should be blogging during the coronavirus. Yes, I am a freelance writer and depend on client blogging to survive, but that’s secondary to my list of reasons why you need to be blogging.
1. Blogging is a Long-Term Play
Unlike Pay-Per-Click and other forms of online advertising, blogging won’t bring you leads instantly. When you publish a blog post, you may get an initial surge of traffic, depending on your reach on social media. After the initial surge of traffic, however, you’ll wait weeks or even months to really see where that post will settle in the search engine listings.
Each blog post is like a small traffic generator. You may only get a few hundred visitors per blog post on a yearly basis (assuming you’re targeting long-tail keywords) from the search engines. While a few hundred visitors a year doesn’t sound like much, if you have 100, 200, 300, or even 1,000 blog posts, it can add up to a ton of yearly traffic.
According to RankXL.com, “The average time it takes for a new blog to get traction in the search engines is around 3 to 6 months.”
Hubspot has this to say about how long it takes to get traffic from blogging:
“Don’t worry about traffic at the outset. In fact, don’t even bother fretting over waterfall graphs for a while. Focus on creating valuable content consistently, and if you’ve done your homework and have a clear understanding of your audience, trust that they’ll find you.
As traction from the search engines picks around the six-month mark, you’ll begin noticing that your older posts are contributing significantly to your overall traffic. It’s around this time you’ll start seeing incremental spikes in traffic, blog subscribers, and most importantly, blogging morale.”
It’s clear; you’re not going to build a massive amount of traffic to your website from blogging this week, next week, or even over the next couple of months.
It’s a long-term marketing strategy that will give and give and give, again, but you have to build it up first.
I believe in building the foundation first. Blogs require about 50 to 100 posts just to get the foundation built. Those only posting once per month or even once per week aren’t using blogging properly.
More on my blogging recommendations later in this article.
You can Contact Me Directly and I will help you with regular blogging. Go here now to find out which blog package I recommend for your business.
2. Blogging is Smart Marketing
Most types of marketing require you to put your message in front of your target audience and sell them. How many people actually like to sell?
Most people don’t like to feel likely there were sold something and it takes a special type of person to really enjoy the art of selling.
Blogging allows you to intercept your target audience without selling. You become a part of their product or service research by providing useful information they are searching for.
Instead of seeking out potential customers, your target audience will find you!
3. Your Audience is Online Right Now
If you thought people used the internet a lot before, imagine what it’s going to look like now. With so many people working from home and others stuck at home, an internet connection may be the only thing keeping some of us connected to each other and sane.
Many consumers have more time on their hands than they know what to do with. This means they will be online searching for you. They will flood social media channels and will be typing more queries into Google than ever before.
Blogging now allows you to get in front of your target audience, while you have their full attention. For the smart marketer, this is an opportunity to find new leads and build your business.
4. Writers have Extra Time
Sure, I already work from home, so the coronavirus doesn’t adjust my life too much.
However, a typical week includes at least one full day out of the house and usually one or two nights out. Right now, leaving my house (other than to walk our two dogs) seems silly and unnecessary.
I have about an extra 15 hours per week, which translates to more time to blog for you. With my extra time, I could easily create 5 or 10 new blog posts a week for you and build your blog’s foundation quickly.
5. It Will Pay Off Later
Blogging now pays off later. As I stated before, blogging is a long-term strategy. Both sources I quoted stated 6 months as a good benchmark for expecting a spike in traffic from a new blog post.
Right now, we have been told it could be 8 weeks or longer before we are back to normal. If you start blogging, continue blogging, or ramp up your blogging efforts, you’ll be in better shape when things start to return to whatever normal will look like after the coronavirus.
Your blogging efforts now will pay off big time later. Imagine if you hired me to write one blog post per day for the next 60 days. Six months from the time that first blog post was written, every day, you’d have a new blog post hitting that 6-month mark.
My Advice for Blogging during the Coronavirus
As I have already said, I believe right now is an opportunity for businesses to ramp up their blogging efforts. If your business is struggling and won’t be able to make much of a profit during these times, you should probably shut down all non-essential tasks and marketing.
However, for those with a cash reserve or those still making plenty of profits, my advice is simple: blog as much as you possibly can!
Here are my recommendations, based on the size of your website/company:
- One-man (or woman) operations with a local audience – Post 1-2 times per week minimum
- One-man (or woman) operations with a global audience – Post 2-3 times per week minimum
- Small Local Businesses – Post 1-2 times per week minimum
- Small Businesses with a National or Global Audience – Post 2-3 times per week minimum
- Medium-sized Local Businesses – Post 2-3 times per week minimum
- Medium-sized Businesses with a National or Global Audience – Post 3-5 times per week
- Larger Businesses – Post 4-7 times per week
Along with the size of your business, it’s also important to look at your industry. If you’re in a very highly-competitive industry, especially if you’re an online business, you need to be even more aggressive with your blogging.
For competitive industries, such as hosting, VPNs, finance, insurance, education, jobs, and electronics, I recommend blogging at least once per day and even twice per day, if you can afford it.
Some industries will be able to better position themselves as the coronavirus comes and goes. Blogging now will put you in great shape when we do recover and you’ll be able to cash in with more website traffic, a well-established expertise in your field and more leads coming in to help your business recover.
If you’re ready to start blogging, contact me directly to find out what type of blog package I recommend for your business.
