The 3 key lessons from my second year of blogging

Happy birthday to me. Yes… just last week my humble little blog celebrated its second birthday. Huzzah! To commemorate my first birthday I published a post outlining the key lessons from my first year of blogging. It turned out to be quite popular. Who’d of thought? So second time round I thought I’d honour that tradition and share the key lessons from my second year in the game. So without further adieu, here they are…

Lesson 1 – Economies of scale emerge

I was semi-obsessed during my first year of blogging. Particularly with numbers… always the numbers. I often liken blogging to a video game. You have your current high score (traffic, subscribers, Alexa rank etc) and you constantly strive to beat it. Which typically translates into frantic blogging activity, particularly for newbies. I was no different, aiming to publish two posts a week, and eight posts a month. Often I did.

However, the need for life balance eventually begun to retain importance. In my second year my productivity dropped significantly. Heck, this is my first post in almost a month (but remember we’ve just come out of holiday season peeps… forgive me). I doubt I published more than four posts in a month in 2009. Yet my subscribers tripled in that same time period (despite Feedburner’s ongoing reporting inaccuracy). Significantly lower productivity, yet far superior results.

Which does makes sense. After a year, Google begins to trust you, and search engine rankings follow. I now receive a steady stream of organic traffic from relevant keywords such as “online marketing”, “marketing blog” and “Australian brands on Twitter”. Furthermore, with an established audience, my new posts spread far more efficiently via social channels (when they are good enough). These two factors in particular, help to deliver some economies of scale in building the blog.

Unfortunately, most new bloggers give up before they experience these benefits.

Lesson 2 – Choose a goal. Stick to it!

When I created this blog my core goal was related to long-term employment opportunities. I was already a digital marketer working within the agency environment, but I was no different to thousands of other digital nomads. I wanted a point of differentiation. A personal brand; to ensure the best possible long-term employment opportunities, whether they be within an agency, or working as a solo consultant (I still haven’t decided which I’d prefer). Establishing this blog was a primary strategy to securing that future.

However, in retrospect I lost sight of that goal during my first year. I got caught up in the ego-boost of the traffic spike and my subject matter strayed. Perhaps I was reading too much Problogger, or perhaps I was trying to produce too many posts. But my writing strayed from business oriented topics towards resource posts on building a blog.

It wasn’t until my second year that I realised I’d lost sight of my initial intent. While it may have brought in plenty of traffic, my content wasn’t building any cred as a serious marketer. Rather, I was beginning to position myself as a “pro-blogger”. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it wasn’t going to contribute to the type of employment opportunities I wanted to create in the future.

So I refined my content to align with my original goal. I focused on positioning myself as a (mostly) serious industry commentator. In particular I aimed to produce content under the following two core categories:

1. Topical industry issues – Including iSnack 2.0, Toyota’s high profile social pitch and the viability of specialist social media agencies
2. Case studies – Including social media masterclass, Facebook marketing, sports marketing & not-for-profit marketing

The lesson was simple – never forget why you’re actually writing, and always ensure your content stays consistent to that purpose.

Lesson 3 – Think global. Play local

The Internet knows no boundaries, this much is true. And for my first year of blogging I saw no need to play locally. Why should I when there is a whole world (wide web) of possibilities? But again, I had lost sight of my original goal. While theoretically I could generate international employment opportunities in the future, the reality is that the vast majority of people prefer to work with local resources. Which meant that the smart move was to establish a stronger local presence.

In order to achieve this I gave my content a far stronger local flavour. Not only did I focus on topical issues, but issues related specifically to the Australian marketing industry. It drastically narrowed my audience! There’s no doubt I alienated many members of my existing audience by changing tack and discussing topics that had little relevance to them (my traffic went from 80% originating from international markets to an 80% Australian audience). But it was an important move in strengthening my local network. TodayI have an extended network of local industry punters who I’d call friends. Last year I didn’t.

And at the end of the day, that network is likely to serve me far better than any internationally driven traffic spikes ever could (especially given that I don’t run any advertising on this blog).

What are your key lessons?

So I’ve had my say. But I’m sure there are plenty of other lessons people have learned in their own travels over the last 12 months. If you’ve got any to share, feel free to chime in via the comments. And remember… sharing is caring