So you launched a blog a few years ago. Great! Blogs can be wonderful content tools. Maybe you launched yours as part of a broader website redesign, and the designer talked you into it. Or maybe some employees were eager to write for it, and they won you over with a “content is king” pitch. Fast-forward a few years, and the momentum is gone. The blog has a few posts on it—but it has largely sat neglected since the bloom wore off, and now you’re not sure what to do with it. The good news is it’s not too late to revive it. But if you don’t want to or can’t—or, realistically, won’t—then you should probably take it down.
The main reason to have a blog is as a means of sharing with the world (or at least your clients and prospects) how smart you are about whatever you do. Having a languishing (or altogether dead) one, then, doesn’t serve that purpose—on the contrary, it may do some harm. Few things are more discouraging to prospects than finding partial answers to questions—reading the first in a(n alleged) series that never materializes. I’d submit it’s better not to have a blog at all than to have an outdated or neglected one.
But let’s say one of your 2022 resolutions is the blog’s revival—where should you start? I recommend starting with an honest assessment of why you’ve struggled to produce content for it. Have the employees who were assigned or eager to write for it taken other positions or left the firm? Have the necessary internal authorities dragged their feet? In other words, if the employees drafting content need managers’ approval before posting, are those managers reluctant to review and approve in a timely manner? If so, why? Is it one more task on their lists they truly don’t have time for? Or were they never sold on the blog vision in the first place? Simply pledging to write more—or tasking employees with writing more—won’t fix the content problem if something deeper is going on. Take the time to assess where you’ve gone wrong before trying anything new.
Then, address all the issues you unearth. Perhaps most importantly, help everyone get on the same page about the reason for the blog in the first place—make sure everyone shares the vision. A consistent content-production program is inarguably hard work and requires dedication—often from employees whose primary job it isn’t, more on which in a moment—so an understanding of the why and some enthusiasm for it will go a long way toward securing the required effort.
Next, acknowledge that maintaining a content program requires sufficient resources. If you know you’ll be relying on subject matter experts’ (SMEs) help with content creation, make sure the SMEs know that and are in the loop on the reason for the blog. They need to be excited about it, too—otherwise, their daily responsibilities will inevitably dampen their enthusiasm for making themselves available as resources to your content folks. Getting everyone on the same page from the outset will avoid frustration and missed deadlines.
From there, do what you likely didn’t do the first time: Plan. If employees are concerned about capacity or editorial authority or approval processes, solve those problems. Establish the processes, the people, and set some goals and expectations around what the content cadence will look like. Importantly, appoint an editor whose responsibility is overseeing content creation—not necessarily writing it themselves but identifying who will do the writing and creating a calendar with a rough schedule of what posts will be published when. Try to be realistic and start slowly. After all, the blog’s already languished for a while—no one will expect daily posts out of nowhere. Once a month is probably a good place to start. You can always increase your cadence, but once you’ve built an audience with expectations, it’s harder to slow down.
Finally, make sure to discuss the content- and idea-generation process with all your involved staff and set expectations about how it will generally proceed. Maybe you expect (and trust) your newly appointed managing editor to handle idea-generation on their own. Or maybe you expect the firm’s senior executives to have oversight and input. Setting expectations with everyone involved on how content ideas will be generated and pursued from the outset will help avoid future conflict among employees with different takes on voice or vision or direction.
And then, just maybe, you’re off and running! Or at least walking, which is a great place to start. Blogging may not be for everyone—but it can be a meaningful contributor to your brand-building and marketing efforts. So rather than cringe as you think about that dusty corner of your website, make 2022 the year you revisit and revive it.
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