Consistency is a bitch. If you’re anything like me, consistency in your blogging & marketing (and even in your work) can be next to impossible. We all fail at this at one time or another. I can be pretty terrible at it myself. But I know it’s important and I keep working on it.
Consistency may be the hobgoblin of small minds according to Emerson, but it breeds trust and trust leads to… well, leads.
And we all know what comes after leads (this is where you mentally play that cash register ringing sound).
Commenting
Consistency with commenting is important because of the signals it sends (whether people are conscious or unconscious of these signals). It’s another area where I’ve gone all over the road and seen participation both grow amazingly fast but also take a big hit if I screw it up.
You need to make several important decisions about comments and commenting, and stick with them.
- Create a comment policy for your blog. Enforce it and stick with it.
- Decide whether or not you’re going to reply to every comment.
- Decide what kind of comments you’re going to delete and why.
- Decide what blogs or what kinds of posts you’re going to comment on, then follow through on that. If you put effort and time into commenting a lot on someone else’s blog and then suddenly you stop showing up, people might think you’re upset with that blogger or that something happened to you. Either way, not a good situation to put yourself in (and yeah, guilty as charged).
Plugins & Upgrades
This might seem like an odd one but hear me out. Blogs are social and ephemeral in many ways, but in a nuts-and-bolts way they are technical “machines.” Machines which consist of lines of code residing on a computer somewhere. Instead of physical moving parts, the blog “machine” is made up of calculations driven by computer code.
Just as a real machine if made up of parts which need to be fixed or replaced on occaision, a blog is made up of parts, too:
- Database
- Blog software
- Visual appearance (theme, skin, template, whatever)
- Plugins (widgets, add-ons, gadgets, whatever)
- Web hosting
- Security
These are all “parts” that need to be managed. Many of these parts will have an influence on your search visibility. Some are popular and flexible and using them correctly ensures you traffic. For example, choosing a popular blog software platform with many tools for boosting social interactions would give you a traffic boost.
Right now I am looking at eleven plugins that need upgrades on this blog. I fail bigtime. This is partly due to some technical issues. I have a nifty reworking of Remarkablogger in the works for you that will (hopefully, oh, so hopefully) fix all these little bugaboos and make it way easier to upgrade.
Post Formats
Following through with a particular post format gives your readers the consistency they crave (which leads to trust, which leads to purchases). If you were to go back even over the last few posts here on this blog (as of the original publish date, for those of you reading this in the future) you would find a lack of follow-through in this area. Now, I could argue that point and say, “Well, I was trying to find my way through a personal wilderness into something new and experimenting was part of that process.” But you know what? It doesn’t matter, because to a complete stranger who shows up from nowhere, all she sees are post formats that go all over the place. That does not inspire feelings of security and trust.
Here are areas of post formatting where you can follow through on a consistent basis:
- Post images: yes or no? Where? What type (stock or self-made or CC-licenced, etc.) How many pictures per post? Where will they be placed within the post? How will you caption them or give credit to their creators?
- Subheads: yes or no, and if yes, what heading level? Use title case (where you capitalize the first letters of all words except small connecting words) in subheadings or no?
- Guest poster biographies: When you receive guest posts on your blog, having guidelines for author biographies and following through on them will boost traffic to the author’s site (and make you look good in the process).
- Regular feature posts: Every Saturday I have my Link Journeys post. Every. Saturday. Maybe once in recent memory I missed it. If you have anything that’s meant to go out regularly, make sure it goes out regularly.
Internal Linking
As you write a post or after its been written (but not yet published), you want to follow through with internal linking to your own content. It’s really easy to just get lazy and not do this. If you have to get a plugin that does it for you automatically, well then, do that. Even a simple related posts plugin is better than nothing by a million times.
One of the easiest ways you have to boost your own SEO and get more pageviews and lengthier visits to your blog is to make sure you’re linking back to your own relevant content in every single post you write.
There were times when I got lazy and just didn’t create internal links in posts. I wrote them and hit publish and realized, “Oh, shit, I don’t have any internal links in that post. Oh, well.” Not good. When you’re marketing your business with a blog, there are always opportunities to link to your about page, services/products pages, resource pages, contact page, as well as previous posts.
Post Scheduling and Frequency
I try to post every day. I don’t always succeed, but if I miss a day it’s almost never because I’m too busy working on other things. I believe in paying myself first in this way because without posts there is no traffic, and without traffic there is no lead generation, and without lead generation there are no sales. Even if I can’t create a post myself, I will at least get someone else to do it and have a guest post.
I’m not saying you should post every day. I’m saying you should post consistently. Stick with a schedule.
Post-Posting Promotion
Alliteration for the win. After you hit publish, then what? Consistent follow-through here is key:
- Immediately post to Twitter & Facebook
- Schedule automatic tweets and updates promoting the post to people in different time zones or who weren’t online when you posted (yes, that’s right, I’m saying to automate this—one of the few times it can almost never backfire on you).
- Email your list to tell them you have a new post on the blog (which you should be doing—screw RSS).
- Follow people who promote your post and engage with them on social media. Reciprocate.
Do these consistently and watch your traffic, email list and leads grow.
Email Newsletters
Nothing causes people to unsubscribe from your list more than inconsistency. I bet you’ve noticed what happens if you don’t email your list for a while and then suddenly one day you do: you lose people like an epidemic. Had you been consistent in your emails, hardly any of those people would’ve left.
This is one of the toughest ones. I’ve seen even the biggest names fuck this up (Oh, hi Chris Brogan! lol). A consistent email newsletter is really tough.
And frankly, that’s a huge reason why I don’t have one. I just email you like I would email any real person because I know that’s what I can do (I also happen to think it’s better marketing too).
How Consistent Are You?
As you can see, follow-through is a beautiful thing when you do it. A lack of follow-through can severely hamper your efforts to succeed with blog marketing. I’ve managed to do well despite my shortcomings in this area… but just imagine how much better I could do if my own follow-through was better?
Now apply this to your situation: Where is your consistency and follow-through lacking?
Image attribution: arenamontanus
I fight the “Resistance” [Steven Pressfield's term] all the time. What I've found that works for me is to develop a daily work flow and keep it extremely simple. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. I automate as much as possible the stuff I hate doing. On a typical day, I do my “grunt work” in about two hours of uninterrupted time in the morning from 7-9am. The rest of the day I can do whatever else I need to do in my business (all of it planned the day before). That helps me be consistent, knowing exactly what I need to do every day, and planning out the rest of the day the night before. Also, I try not to be overzealous when I plan. I only put things on my list that I know I can get done in a day.
Sounds like you got something good that works for you, Seth, thanks for
sharing! My list of things every day is small but the “containers” of them
are big, if you know what I mean. They can be very broad sometimes and need
a sub-list. Writing in my journal and creating a blog post are two items on
my daily list. Working on client projects or Headway projects are on it also
but they require their own lists.
If I start finding myself being inconsistent, its usually a smack up the side of the head to say “do you really want to be doing this shit” I recently culled some projects and “obligations” and feel renewed, It's brought a level of consistency back to my work, simply because I'm not feeling sapped all the damned time.
Jackie, that is an excellent point, thanks so much for bringing that up. If
we're having a hard time doing something consistently, we tend to blame
ourselves for not having discipline or willpower (I believe willpower may be
a myth but that's a different story). When what it may really mean is we
shouldn't be doing it at all (in other words, outsource).
There's also the possibility that we're self-sabotaging our own success when
it involves activities we KNOW would boost traffic or put money in our
account.
That reminds me about a blog post I need to write…
Self sabotage…I know that beast oh too well. Look forward to that post!
Michael,
You can't believe how timely this is! thanks for a much need kick in the butt! Just finished having sight updates done, now time to get back the consistency. Thanks for being such a good role model!!
Cyndee glad you found value in this. You also win the award for best
Freudian slip of the day for “sight updates.” LOL!
In my own experience, what I've found is this. There's a compounding effect to simple actions on a consistent basis. Many of the things you've talked about here seem small at first. But like compound interest, they have a tendency to add up over time. Then when they do pay off, it's quite huge
Great point, Srini, about the compounding effect! Thanks for mentioning
that, it's very important. A few small things really do add up.
Consistency can be challenging, especially with the things you've listed here. But to strive for consistency, always, is very important.
The one thing I'd add in big huge bold letters is the consistency of message. Blogs that go all over the place in their topics and message are an instant turn-off.
We're each so overloaded with info as it is, we want to count on our favorite blogs to be a welcoming capsule that offers a predictable message in creative new ways.
It's all so much easier said than done.
Yes! Which can be challenging to multipotentialites or polymaths such as
myself. Thankfully, blogging & marketing is a fairly big umbrella for
everything. It is easier said than done, thanks so much for bringing this to
the conversation.
When I started my blog in February, I decided to post 5 days a week. I think I was pretty consistent and now I have a decent archive of posts on a good variety of topics.
Now that I'm getting more readers and connecting with more people, I feel like I need to be a little less consistent. I don't want to take attention from a good post that's still generating conversation just for the sake of sticking to my 5 a week rule.
You've helped me realize that I have much more work to do on my blog–thanks for providing specifics. Newbies like me need all the help we can get!
Marianne, don't stop doing what has made you successful!
[...] The Art of Consistency in Blogging & Marketing – Some reasons and ideas for being consistent in your blogging habits [...]
Hi Michael,
Good stuff as always.
I'm a little late commenting on this, but I think the “hobgoblins” quote originated with Ralph Waldo Emerson.
You're right! I dunno why I thought it was Churchill.
[...] 5.Be Regular! [...]