What is your schedule?
Last week, Ingrid Abboud aka "Griddy" (@nittyGriddyBlog) posed a question to her blog readers: what is your blog posting schedule?
She came up with this ingenious idea to add every comment that contained the right information into a compendium of blog schedules with the help of blogging tipster Brankica Underwood (@liveurlove). Well, actually she called it a "simple document" but compendium sounds much better right?
When I saw her post, I felt inspired. It was a long day and I had a nice, deep glass of wine. So I wrote a slightly informal response. I thought I would share it here (although with some minor edits and tons of trepidation...)
OK, so my blog is the B2B Marketing Insider. "Not another marketing blog!" you say. Well I decided there was room for a voice from someone inside the walls of large B2B company where I'm livin' the corporate marketing dream over here.
Sometimes, I get inspired by the great work of my peers. Sometimes I get frustrated by the slow pace of change in a large company and in the marketing and business world at large. And sometimes, a guy just needs to rant.
I usually post on Tuesday and Thursday at exactly 9:34 am EST.
And here's why: because some guy told me to. Sort of. I work with a pretty smart SEO guy and he believes that a regular posting schedule is appreciated by the Google gods. (BTW - that guy is none other than my colleague and Business2Community co-founder Brian Rice.)
I don't know about all that but I like me some structure in this crazy world. So I tested a couple different times of the day and found around 9:30 am EST seems to capture more people's immediate attention than the other times I tested. And since 9:30 is too perfect, 9:34 seemed about right.
It was an intentionally unscientific approach to testing because sometimes I want to be more cavalier about my blog. I want to be all like "go away. I write when I want to!" But mostly I've been brain-washed into thinking that structure is good so...I think you get the picture. I don't always post at these times but that's what I aim for.
This goal is what motivates me to write. When I sit down to draft my next post, I usually have a few simple ideas in my head. I search for some inspiration and it usually hits me. Then I throw up on the page for 20-40 minutes. Spell check. Soften the tone (sometimes.) And schedule
Lately I have been running guest posts or profiles of people who are doing great work in B2B Marketing so I usually run them on Thursday with my original content on Tuesday. And all of this is subject to change at the discretion of the author.
I hope this schedule is working for you (my readers). It is not always easy to maintain but this is truly a labor of love! And that, my friends, is how I schedule posts for B2B Marketing Insider.
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So I hope this is a helpful explanation on why I post when I do.
Let me know what you think? Do you want to see more of this raw style or more serious "ROI of Marketing" type stuff. If nothing else, check out Griddy and Brankica's blogs or follow them on Twitter. They're great gals who might inspire your next blog post as they did mine. Thanks!
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