The rules of business blogging are pretty straightforward. Share valuable content. Be consistent. Write to your audience. I have a schedule for my blogging clients, and I do a lot of research to come up with interesting topics and relevant details so I can write something worth reading, week after week. But it bears asking, when do you cross the line into blogging for the sake of blogging?

the numbers game

In this world of instant analytics, we can see which posts are performing well. We know what’s being read and which keywords to hone in on for increased visibility. But when you come up with a handful of really great keywords – the ones hitting the sweet spot between competitiveness and relevance – you drill into them, again and again and again. Can you really write about the same keyword group over and over, without your content becoming a little stale?

I think you absolutely can. The thing about really effective blogging, the kind that creates content worth reading and sharing, is that it’s never wasted. Even if a blog post doesn’t seem to perform all that well when you look at the analytics, was it really a waste of time if one person stumbled across it, read it and learned something useful about the post topic, and by association, you and your business? To me, that’s a win, no matter what the numbers say.

Half of the battle is raising awareness, and you can do that slowly but surely just with consistent, interesting blogging. Social media is another avenue that increases visibility and starts building connections, but there are more hurdles to navigate.

  • Who is your audience?
  • On which social media platforms do they spend time? Where are they most active?
  • Can you separate followers from your true audience?
  • How often can you share useful content?

how to tell if you’re blogging for the sake of blogging

If all you ever do is stare at the numbers, you’re probably veering into blogging-for-the-sake-of-blogging territory. Ask yourself – why do you have a business blog? Is it just to show Google you’re still around? And if so, does that mean you’re recycling your own content (badly) all the time and cramming as many keywords as possible in every post? Red flags, everywhere.

But if the point of your blog is to connect with a real person – even just one – because you want to share information that they’ve gone looking for, then you’re probably doing all right.

That’s the secret, really. Write your blog post as though someone is actually going to read it. How do you want them to feel? What do you want them to take away? If you can do that every time, then you’re blogging the way it’s meant to be done. Nice work.