Why We Stopped Blogging Again
Episode 054: Show Notes
Blogging may be one of the things at the top of the list in our business. The blog was part of the early stages of our business, and existed pre-TCC. We first started blogging before we were even in business together, when it was still just a passion project of Abby’s to educate small business owners on growth strategies. She was blogging five days a week, and literally never skipped a beat. After we met, we then decided to see if we wanted to work together on a longer-term basis. We decided that Emylee would guest blog for what is now the TCC blog, to essentially share the platform, and continued to put out content five days a week.
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Together we would brainstorm ideas for the blog, browse Pinterest, ask our audience what they needed help with, and write about exactly what we had just learned the week before. It definitely was not any of this big picture concept stuff yet because we just weren’t in that place in our business at the time. We kept blogging five days a week for almost a full year, at which point we had significantly grown our website traffic, but we were feeling burnt out. In this episode, we walk through exactly how our blog has transitioned into what it is today, and the strategies we used along the way to get there. So tune in to hear all about our ever evolving blogging journey!
Repurposing Content to Reach New Readers
In the first year of business, we continued to blog for five days a week, sharing the platform to create content for our growing audience. However, at a certain point in time we realized that with all of the blog posts and the crazy amount of content we had created, we had essentially enough words for well over two major, thick, juicy romance novels. We then took Pat Flynn’s approach of repurposing old content, pulling out the gems, freshening them up, and publishing them for new readers to see. This was incredibly helpful for us to continue blogging without feeling the burnout. At that point, we also added an editor to our team to help with the content load and to revamp old blog posts for repurposing.
Why We Stopped Blogging the First Time
After a while we became, you could say, bored with refreshing and repurposing content. We got tired of looking at the same old stuff over and over. When doing our recap, we realized that we weren’t even putting out a lot of content, and had lost our love for blogging. We realized that just because you started a certain strategy in your business, does not mean you have to provide your full attention to that strategy forever and ever. So instead, we tested the stats to see if it was a critical strategy needed for our business to grow. We then decided to stop blogging for a few months, to regain our intentions.
How We Regained Our Fire by Adding to the Team
After taking a good few months break from blogging, we were ready to get started again. However, this time we had a whole new strategy in place. We realized that it wasn’t the writing or the creating of new content that we disliked, but that it was all the editing and additional work that went along with blogging that was holding us back. This is when we made the decision to hire an editor as well as someone to help us create graphics for each post. This gave us back so much and really allowed us to focus on the important aspects of our business, the parts that only we could do. Getting those nitty-gritty, tedious blogging tasks off our plates really gave us the energy we needed to be rejuvenated in the blogging world again.
Bringing On Guest Contributors to Your Blog
With our new blogging strategy in place, we decided that we would each only write one blog post a week, and then bring on guest bloggers to fill up the rest of the days in the week. This was incredibly helpful, and brought in enough random flavor so that if we talked about the same topic all month, no one would really notice! We were also able to be very strategic with the types of content we were putting out, so that the blog posts would align with the scheduled webinar topics to provide additional content for our audience to have at hand.
A Sneak Peek Into Our Guest Blogging Process
In order to be a guest blogger on our site, writers would fill out a form with all the details and their specific topic. For a seamless guest blogging process to go down, our newly added team played a major role. Our blog coordinator was responsible for screening any incoming contributor proposals, vetting the writers, and polishing up the posts for them to be scheduled in the content calendar. The posts would then be sent to our editor, then our coordinator would make final adjustments and upload it to Squarespace for publication. In the beginning, we still answered a few questions here and there, but eventually, we were able to take a completely hands-off approach.
Why Video Killed the Blogging Star
Left and right, here and there, people were telling us to get into video! We absolutely did not want to get on camera, despite the many hours we’d already spent on webinars and Facebook Live. However, we eventually caved and launched TCCtv on YouTube. After this, Abby got so completely distracted by all the amazing things we could do with video that she forgot about the blog. And Emylee, well she adopted a baby in January and also forgot that the blog existed! To top it all off, after we launched TCCtv in December, we did what every normal person does and we launched this podcast.
So What Does Our Blog Life Currently Look Like?
After we launched the podcast, we were putting out content eight times a week! Eight times, guys! This was totally bananas, so we realized that we needed to yet again make an adjustment. As many of you may know, along with the podcast we post show notes for each episode. These essentially act as a complementary blog post, which not only creates another piece of content, but it is also great for SEO purposes. Since Google is unable to “read” our audio content, the show notes provide digital words, which continue to boost our SEO rankings. So now, instead of blogging five times a week AND podcasting three times a week, we have scaled back the noise to only blog twice a week, while still posting podcasts and show notes three times a week.
Quote This
You’re not going to get that old content to repurpose until you put it out there.
Highlights
Understand the importance of repurposing content, to refresh it for a new audience. [0:06:31.4]
Find out why we stopped blogging, the first time, and how we gained new energy. [0:10:03.8]
Learn how we were able to recreate our blogging strategy by adding to our internal team. [0:12:18.9]
Discover how to use guest contributors to bring in additional content to the blog. [0:13:27.2]
Get a sneak peak into how our guest blogging process works for the TCC blog. [0:15:49.0]
Find out why video and our YouTube channeled caused us to stop blogging, again. [0:21:36.0]
Learn more about exactly what our blog looks like today, and how it has evolved.
#TalkStrategyToMe [0:45:10.6]
Answer the poll in the show notes about your favorite way to consume content.
Ask yourself, “What are the strategies that I am doing right now that might be adding to that noise of my community?”
Find a way to scale back or pivot in a new direction to put out content in a new direction.
Figure out how to be there for your people better and stronger instead of just more often.
ON TODAY’S SHOW
Abagail & Emylee
The Strategy Hour Podcast
We help overwhelmed and creative entrepreneurs break down their Oprah-sized dreams to create a functioning command center to tame the chaos of their business. Basically, we think you’re totally bomb diggity, we’re about to uplevel the shiz out of your business.
KEY TOPICS
Repurposing old content, Avoiding blogging burnout, Outsourcing blog tasks, Using guest bloggers, The guest blogging process, Creating video content, Adapting your blog format
