How Far Are You Behind on Your Blog?

The better title for this post might have been how to get ahead of your blog because I’m going to talk about that. However, I feel confident the majority of readers, who click on this title, have a blog, and are behind. I hope that doesn’t sound snarky or mean spirited. It’s just what I’ve found to be true.

It’s what happened to me. Too many blogs are inconsistently fed content and some haven’t seen anything new for…a long time. Why is that?

Why We Get Behind on Our Blogs

I said I’d talk about how to get ahead of your blog, but that begins by knowing why you’re behind. (If you’re not interested in why we get behind skip to How You Get Ahead.) I’ve discussed this with individuals, marketing teams, and social media clubs. Here’s what I’ve learned.

Lack of Priority

Something is always more urgent than blogging. Part of the problem is when people get caught up in urgent tasks, you know, those sudden fires that only you can put out, it keeps you away from the important tasks. The important tasks are those that help you reach your goals. Everyone who has a business blog knows how important content is. I don’t have to talk about Google analytics, king content, and SEO because you already know. So, why are you behind? Try this, the next time you have an urgent task that’s going to take you away from important tasks such as blogging ask yourself this.

• Should I do this right now?
• Who else could handle this?
• If I do this now what am I putting off?

 Sometimes, you’ll need to jump to the urgent task, but not always.

The Exception Becomes the Rule

We’re creatures of habit—good and bad. Blogging is an easy thing to put off. There’s no immediate reward. Deadlines aren’t real; we won’t miss a sale or a contract because we’re late on a blog post. And that’s a big part of the problem. Once we let a blog post slide it becomes easier and easier to let it go until you look up and the last time a new piece of content was published was four months ago.

The Lack of a Plan

There are very few things in business of much significance that don’t require a plan. Procedural books, written policies, and checklists abound. We wouldn’t think of attempting to complete payroll, accounting, or build a widget by the seat of our pants, but that’s exactly the blogging plan far too many businesses use. The lack of a plan is a plan to fail.

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