A simple tip, when writing (whether it’s online content or anything else): be prolific.
This is ironic in the context of not having posted on here for five days, but that’s kind of what triggered the tip…I looked back and saw that I’d had a good run of five blog posts in seven days, then nothing for nearly a week.
For me, as someone who writes for a living, I should be putting up about three posts a week.
Of course, you have to have ideas for these posts – a notion of what you want to say and why – rather just posting any old crap, for the sake of filling space (better not to post at all than post rubbish).
It’s hard to commit to doing this, but – as a business – if you’re posting content, or even just have social media accounts, you should be putting stuff up fairly regularly. If people (potential clients) are looking at your Twitter feed or company blog, and see that your last activity was six months ago, they’re going to lose interest pretty quickly and/or think you’ve just got nothing interesting to say.
If you haven’t posted for two weeks, that’s fair enough – you might have been on holiday (although other staff, if possible, should be writing your content while you’re away).
If you haven’t posted for four weeks, that could still be excused: you may have had a big order/brief to deal with.
Anything longer than that and things start to look a bit iffy.
Of course, you can go the other way, tapping out something every day and – quite frankly – getting on people’s nerves with the amount you post.
Ultimately, it’s all about balance: a couple of times a week is more than enough for most people/businesses… but, either commit or don’t: once every few months is pretty pointless.
In fact, the ‘be prolific’ rule applies to quite a few things. If you’re a start-up business, it definitely applies. I’ve seen my friend’s restaurant business grow dramatically, through day after day of hard graft – through pulling 15-hour days.
There’s no real secret here: sheer hard work brings success.
Now all I’ve got to do is find some bloody interesting things to write about this week… or look like a massive hypocrite.
Go fly my pretties – be prolific.
