You’ve probably done this yourself. You’re on a local business’s website, you click Blog, and find three posts, the newest being from March 2021.
Nobody decided to stop writing. In fact, the owner had good intentions. A promise was made to write at least one article a week, maybe even use the blog to share insider specials.
But life got busy, the website slipped down the list, and that was that.
But the person visiting doesn’t know any of that. All they see is a business that went quiet, and a small voice asks whether it’s still open.
What an empty blog says
A blog with nothing on it doesn’t read as neutral.
It reads as a plan that was started and dropped. A blog with one post from years ago is worse, because it has a date on it.
That matters because people are deciding whether to trust you, usually before they ever pick up the phone. Everything on your site is evidence. A stale blog is evidence you’d rather they didn’t find.
So why have one at all?
Because a blog is where the answers live.
Your customers type their questions into Google in their own words: how much does this cost, how long does it take, do I need this or that; how do I install it.
A homepage can’t hold all those answers. A blog can, one post at a time, and every answer is another way for someone to find you.
A single page can’t earn you search traffic over time. A blog that keeps answering questions can.
Why we write your first two posts
An empty blog at launch is the worst start there is.
So every site we build goes live with two posts already written and published, using the detail only you have.
The blog looks alive on day one, and you can see what a good post for your business looks like before you’re asked to write one.
Keeping it going without it becoming a job
Use the phone test.
Any question you answer on the phone more than twice is a post waiting to be written. You already know the answer, and you’ve already worked out how to explain it.
All that’s left is writing it down the way you’d say it.
A few things that help:
- One post a month is plenty. Steady beats bursts.
- Short is fine. A clear answer in 300 words beats a padded one in 1,500.
- Write like you talk. Your customers don’t use industry words, so don’t answer them in industry words.
- Quick answers go in the FAQ. If the answer fits in a paragraph, it belongs there. If it needs a story or a few steps, it’s a post.
If you’d rather not write at all
That’s a reasonable choice.
You can learn to add your own posts in the training session, or we write them for you, with the price agreed before we start.
Either way, the blog keeps growing, and so does the number of ways people can find you.
The only option we’d argue against is the one most small businesses end up with by accident: a blog that says “we used to care about this”.