The 7 New Rules of Blogging

By Content Marketing Advisor, Nick Nichols

Once upon a time, there were generally accepted blogging practices that most of the "gurus" recommended and sometimes even practiced! But in the digital world, change is the only constant.

I’m known for saying, "The only rules are the ones you make," and what I’d like to offer are more guidelines than rules when it comes to blogging in 2023 and beyond.

The key to a high-ROI content marketing strategy is to adopt concepts and ideas that you believe will appeal to your audience and adapt them to your style, personality, schedule and resources. Over time, your audience will tell you one way or the other if what you’re doing is working. If your content is being shared and talked about by others, and, your mailing list is growing and your bottom line is increasing, then you know you’re on the right track. If not, feel free to experiment until you do get the results you want.

Here are 7 "rules" that may not apply anymore and some new guidelines to help you get the most from your blogging efforts.

New Guideline #1: Post Regularly, Post Strategically

Unless you have a large, monetized following (mailing list of at least 1000 people who have bought something from you) the hard reality is that your blog posts are probably not being seen by a lot of people right now. You can verify this via your analytics.

So how do you balance the time necessary to write meaningful blog posts with the lack of immediate return on your time investment?

Start by setting a goal of posting at least two items a month. Then, set up Google Alerts for keywords that you might expect to yield news and other timely information about topics that your target audience needs to know about. Monitor the alerts and use them as idea starters. When you have at least four ideas, write four posts to drip to your blog over the next two-to-four weeks. During that time, collect more ideas and set a specific day to write your next four posts. Rinse and repeat.

Over the next year you’ll have created about 25 posts, which is probably a more than your competitors have written. You’ll have demonstrated your commitment to keeping your website fresh. And you’ll have 25 more chances of being seen in search results in a meaningful way.

New Guideline #2: Turn Off Comments, Turn On Follow-Up

Instead of allowing comments that may detract from your content, keep abreast of other articles and posts that might support, add to or even disagree with your point of view. Then write a follow-up to your original post that discusses the other point(s) of view or adds to your original thought process. This demonstrates that you are paying attention without having to respond to individual comments. It also freshens up the original post and may cause it to be re-indexed for better search positioning.

New Guideline #3: The Best Person to State Your Point of View is You

The primary goal of a blog post or article should be to offer insight about, guidance on and/or a solution to a real-world problem your target audience has that they can benefit from immediately.

The second goal is to position you as a subject matter expert and industry thought leader to your target audience; the media; potential joint venture partners – even potential suitors.

Subject matter expertise and industry thought leadership are largely a matter of perception – both by third parties and by the would-be expert or leader. You become an expert or leader by acting as an expert or leader. And one great way to do that is to take a stand on an issue or topic you’re passionate about that demonstrates your expertise and leadership.

The good news is that your content doesn’t need to be at the level of a Pulitzer Prize-winning piece. But it does need to offer value-based information that stimulates thought and, hopefully, motivates positive action.

New Guideline #4: Adopt and Adapt

Most of my blog posts, articles, podcasts and video material were triggered by content that was created by someone else. Or my content stemmed from the actions or inaction of someone else. So it is with just about all content creators.

The key is to put your own brand or spin on someone else’s ideas and clarify, amplify and enhance those ideas in your own words, with your own personality and style. Never plagiarize. I always run my content through CopyScape to make sure it doesn’t infringe on someone else’s work. And give attribution when you state a concept, statistic or quote from someone else’s work. But remember that ideas cannot be copyrighted. Only the exact expression of those ideas can be copyrighted.

New Guideline #5: Pictures are Worth Their Weight in Attention

Imagine watching a movie with no soundtrack. It would be far less entertaining and might even be boring. So it is with blog posts and articles. We live in a very visual world and a post without at least one good image will be crippled from the start. A picture may not be worth a thousand words in a blog post, but a good, relevant, funny or controversial image can break up paragraphs of text and add dimension and balance.

The “Gutenberg” content editor in the WordPress 5 update in late 2018 makes creating blog articles even easier using text blocks and a drag-and-drop image placement fuction. And stock image sites like iStockPhoto offer thousands of royalty-free images you can purchase.

Make an effort to add at least one licensed or permission-based image to your articles and posts to make them more tempting to read. And do what most people who use images don’t do: put a caption under your images to make them even more relevant. It’s a proven copywriting fact that people often skim text but read sub-headlines and image captions. Help people to absorb your content and more of them will.

An alternative to finding and posting several images in a blog post is to use blockquotes like this to create a callout effect to draw attention to points you want to emphasize and to break up the page.

New Guideline #6: Quality Trumps Quantity

As a website and advertising copywriter I’m constantly battling uninformed people who believe that shorter is always better. Yes, we live in a sound bite, quick-cut, attention deficit society but I can prove to you that people will read, watch or listen to content of any length as long as they perceive it to be interesting, relevant, entertaining, controversial, clever, or a combination of these.

Legend has it that Max Hart, co-founder of suit maker Hart, Schaffner & Marx, was having an argument with his ad man who wanted to run a full-page ad in the New York Times during The Great Depression when cash was tight.

Hart lamented that no one would read a full-page ad and it would be a waste of money. The ad man then bet Hart $100 (a meaningful sum in those times) that he could get Hart to eagerly read a full-page ad from top to bottom and all he had to do was write the headline.

Hart agreed to the bet. Here’s the headline:

"This Page is All about Max Hart"

An embarrassed Hart coughed up the c-note.

The point again is that people will read, watch or listen to content of any length as long as they perceive it to be interesting, relevant, entertaining, controversial, clever, or a combination of these.

So don’t fret over the length of your posts. But you might want to think of your blog content as articles instead of posts and make them just long enough to make your points, tell your story or get your message across, and not a word longer – or shorter.

New Guideline #7: All the World’s a Stage

What good is your content if no one reads it? Unless you have a broad-based and monetized audience that visits your blog regularly, you are doing yourself and your potential readers a disservice if you keep you content under wraps at your own site.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but having your good content appear on relevant third-party sites will actually drive visitors to your site for more. This is because when your content appears on third-party sites you get the implied endorsement of that site. This principle has applied to printed magazine and newspaper articles for decades.

Important note: In recent years there has been continuing scuttlebutt in SEO land about the penalty that Google is alleged to apply to so-called "duplicate content." This penalty is said to adversely affect the rankings of content that appears in more than one place, also known as syndicated content. Some "experts" advise against content syndication for this reason.

Matt Cutts, Google spokesperson at the time, responded to this by saying that Google would penalize what he called "spammy" duplicate content. By this he meant, content that has been manipulated through content "spinning" to appear different and avoid the penalty. Cutts has said that in its quest to deliver the most relevant content after a search query, Google will attempt to filter out similar results. Perhaps you’ve seen Google’s message to this effect when doing searches.

Here’s what you need to know about duplicate content…

While it may be true that Google will filter out duplicate content in search results, it is false that duplication of quality content will hurt you.

I have a saying: "You can’t make it too easy for qualified prospects to find you." The more good content you get published in places that are relevant to your target audience, the more exposure you will get and the more money you will make.

Action Steps:

1. Sign up for Google Alerts.
2. Monitor the results for idea starters.
3. Write at least four articles with at least one relevant, captioned image.
4. Post at least two articles per month for the next year.
5. Look for third-party sites to submit your content.
6. Post your content on social media sites.

Need help with your marketing? Call Dalfort Media at 214-458-2290.