{"id":5895,"date":"2015-02-11T13:34:34","date_gmt":"2015-02-11T13:34:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mediashower.com\/blog\/?p=5895"},"modified":"2015-02-11T16:40:02","modified_gmt":"2015-02-11T16:40:02","slug":"you-need-3-blog-posts-heres-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/you-need-3-blog-posts-heres-why\/","title":{"rendered":"You Need 3 Blog Posts. Here’s Why."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Quality<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m talking with a prospective client. We’ll call her Ms. X, because that makes her seem more mysterious. Ms. X is the marketing manager of a large company. She wants to get more traffic to the company website, and is thinking of starting a content marketing program.<\/p>\n

“What I want to know,” Ms. X asks me, “is how much content is enough? <\/em>How many blog posts per week do I need?”<\/p>\n

“Do you want the short answer or the long answer?” I ask in return.<\/p>\n

“The short answer,” she responds. “I’m busy.”<\/p>\n

“A lot.”<\/p>\n

She laughs.<\/p>\n

“But this is the answer you’d expect from a content marketing company, right?” I continue. “If you ask a dairy farmer how much milk you should drink each day, he’ll tell you a glass with every meal, plus it’s great for the skin if you fill your bathtub and bathe in it. However, we consistently see a correlation between frequency of published content<\/strong> and increased website traffic<\/strong>. As a rule, more content equals more traffic<\/strong>. Let me explain why.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Newspaper Analogy<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Imagine you’re the publisher of the New York Times<\/em>,” I continue. “Now I’ll ask you the same question: How much content is enough?”<\/p>\n

“What do you mean?” she asks.<\/p>\n

“How big should the daily newspaper be? To cut costs, could you get away with cutting the size of the newspaper in half?”<\/p>\n

“Probably not,” she admits. “You could reduce the size a little bit, but gradually subscribers would notice. I actually have seen this with USA Today. <\/em>I travel a lot, and hotels always give you a free copy of USA Today<\/em>. Over the years, that paper has grown so thin that it’s hardly worth reading.”<\/p>\n

“Which is why they can’t even give it away for free,” I point out.<\/p>\n

“Right, but I’m not in the newspaper business. I’m just doing a blog.”<\/p>\n

“But you are<\/em> a publisher. Every<\/em> business on the Web is now a publisher. And being a publisher has certain rules of the game. The first rule is, You need quantity. <\/em>You need a lot.”<\/p>\n

“If that was true, you could just hire a college intern to churn out a hundred blog posts a month. We don’t want junk on the blog. That’s bad for our brand.”<\/p>\n

“Right,” I counter, “which is why the second rule is You need quality. <\/em>Your content has to be good! In fact, the art is to publish the highest quantity<\/strong> that you can, while still maintaining the highest quality<\/strong> that you can.”<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Doorway Analogy<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Let me ask this a different way,” she responds. “How many posts do most of your clients publish?”<\/p>\n

“Three per week.”<\/p>\n

“Three blog posts a week?<\/em> How on earth could you find that many things to write about my<\/em> business?”<\/p>\n

“I’m going to share a secret.” I lower my voice. “Most customers will not read every post on your blog. Are there any blogs that you<\/em> read regularly?”<\/p>\n

“No,” she responds flatly. “I do not have time.”<\/p>\n

“But you have <\/em>read individual blog posts.”<\/p>\n

“Sure, if I see one that’s relevant. Or if someone emails me a link.”<\/p>\n

“Think of your blog instead as a way to bring in prospective <\/em>customers. It drives new business.”<\/p>\n

“That’s what every marketing company says.”<\/p>\n

“Right, but hear me out. Every blog post you publish is like a doorway back to your site. <\/em>Find the questions that your prospective customers are asking, and write a great blog post on your answer. The more questions you answer, the more problems you solve, the more doorways you’re opening to your site when they search on those topics.”<\/p>\n

“I guess it’s like any other marketing program,” Ms. X responds. “When we’re figuring out how much paid search marketing, or direct mail marketing, we need enough to make a difference. You don’t advertise on Google for a day, then call it quits.”<\/p>\n

“Exactly. Content marketing is no different. Make the commitment.”<\/p>\n

Long pause. “So three posts per week, then.”<\/p>\n

“Three posts a week is a good goal. That’s a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule. It signals to search engines — and your customers — that you are regularly investing in content. Within a few months, you’ll have dozens of new doorways to your site, and if you do it right, your search ranking will start to improve as well. That’s why there is a correlation between more content <\/strong>and more traffic<\/strong>, as I mentioned earlier. Put this way, it’s common sense.”<\/p>\n

“One last question,” she asks. “I’m imaginary, aren’t I?”<\/p>\n

“Well, you’re a composite,” I admit. “You’re a mashup of a hundred different customers who have asked this question. It’s a common question.”<\/p>\n

“That’s good, because I think \u2026 I think I love you.”<\/p>\n

“I love you too,” I respond. “As an imaginary friend.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sir John Hargrave is the CEO of <\/em>Media Shower<\/em><\/a> and author of <\/em>Mind Hacking<\/em><\/a>, available in 2016 from Simon & Schuster’s Gallery Books. This post is free to distribute under <\/em>Creative Commons 4.0<\/em><\/a>: if you like it, share it.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m talking with a prospective client. We’ll call her Ms. X, because that makes her seem more mysterious. Ms. X is the marketing manager of a large company. She wants to get more traffic to the company website, and is thinking of starting a content marketing program. “What I want to know,” Ms. X asks… Read More…<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[58],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5895"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5895"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5899,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5895\/revisions\/5899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}