The blogwatcher – Great Content is not King.
Like most things in life, I am late to blogging. When other business people were blogging their thoughts and interests and becoming citizen journalists, I was busy starting my second family.
- Image by Getty Images via Daylife
A dear friend and a person that dishes out good advice one referred to me as a blog watcher, as I watched from the sidelines the trends and made my observations on what was going on on various blogs. This is what I am going to share with you here, one of my observations.
When starting out blogging you will search everywhere and you will be told “you need great content” and “content is King”. Well guess what, you don’t and it’s not.
Do you go and by a magazine on drainage systems and read it for it’s great content? You may do if you are a drainage specialist, but the ordinary person is only likely to pick up and read the drainage systems magazine, if it is next to them on the tube and they have read all of the other newspapers lying around!
What you need is relevant content. Nothing annoys someone more when they are googling something to come up with something useless and irrelevant.
I mainly blog about the courier and transport industry, and sometimes that is hard work. I often blog “how to’s” and it’s these how to’s that are the most relevant thing on that blog. It’s relevant to what people are looking for, they find it and they get a warm happy glow they have not trawled through a search engine finding spammy or in their mind useless sites. Often the is advice on that blog that gains us no income, but it answers important questions, like how to get your cupcakes delivered.
Accept that your blog may not be the sort of blog that readers come back everyday, they come back when they are needing something relevant.
Do your research, dull, boring but terribly important. You can write a cracking article about the life cycle of the lesser spotted tapeworm, but if no one is looking for that, no one will find your blog. If they do, the chances are it will not be for what they are looking for (unless they have a lesser spotted tapeworm) and however wonderful you write, it won’t be read. What a waste of your great content.
When you are looking at the blogging experts writing about what works for them, remember not everything they say will work for you. So take it, adapt it, twist it, re-work it into something that does work for you. Remember there is more to blogs and their communities than the amount of comments posted!
If your blog doesn’t attract the visitors you want, stop worrying about great and start worrying about relevant.
About Sarah ArrowSarah Arrow is the managing editor of Birds on the Blog, in real life she is the communications director of a same day courier service. She is an enthusiastic UK based pro-blogger and co- author of the soon to be published Zero to Blogger
View all posts by Sarah Arrow →
13 Responses to The blogwatcher – Great Content is not King.
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Great point well made. I often speak to clients who say ‘but no-one wants to read about X, Y, Z – our industry is boring’ and I have to remind them it’s not ONLY about regular readers, it’s about the ability to use a blog in the way you can’t necessarily use a website.
Blog posts can be titled with questions and queries that come up in searches all the time, and having your post show in the results can be the step towards that potential client using you, or choosing your competitor.
Twitter: nikkipilkington
I have found it works well in the sense that a potential customer can see we know what we are doing. The blog may not get a comment, but it is very relevant to our potential customers
and we all want customers 
Great point well made. I often speak to clients who say ‘but no-one wants to read about X, Y, Z – our industry is boring’ and I have to remind them it’s not ONLY about regular readers, it’s about the ability to use a blog in the way you can’t necessarily use a website.
Blog posts can be titled with questions and queries that come up in searches all the time, and having your post show in the results can be the step towards that potential client using you, or choosing your competitor.
Twitter: nikkipilkington
I have found it works well in the sense that a potential customer can see we know what we are doing. The blog may not get a comment, but it is very relevant to our potential customers
and we all want customers 
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Like you Sarah, it took me a while to start blogging mainly because I thought a blogger ahd to be an expert at something. I also worried that no one would read or be interested inr eading anything I wrote, When I finally got round to setting up and writting a blog I didn’t tell anyone about it!
Great tips, I will do more research as result of reading your blog
Twitter: ethnicsupplies
Like you Sarah, it took me a while to start blogging mainly because I thought a blogger ahd to be an expert at something. I also worried that no one would read or be interested inr eading anything I wrote, When I finally got round to setting up and writting a blog I didn’t tell anyone about it!
Great tips, I will do more research as result of reading your blog
Twitter: ethnicsupplies
I too am a late developer with this blogging milarkey – howeaver a client of mine commented on how knowledgeable I am on health related subjects. I replied that many people know this stuff and she reminded me that when you specialise professionally you assume everyone know what you know!
My main source of info is conversations with current and possible clients and stuff that happens to me on a day to day basis. Try it and you might suprise yourself.
Lol, it seems we all are except for Nikki of course
Yep, you are dead right – conversations are a good source of what people know and don’t know and you can demonstrate your capability with ease when you are writing.
I too am a late developer with this blogging milarkey – howeaver a client of mine commented on how knowledgeable I am on health related subjects. I replied that many people know this stuff and she reminded me that when you specialise professionally you assume everyone know what you know!
My main source of info is conversations with current and possible clients and stuff that happens to me on a day to day basis. Try it and you might suprise yourself.
Lol, it seems we all are except for Nikki of course
Yep, you are dead right – conversations are a good source of what people know and don’t know and you can demonstrate your capability with ease when you are writing.
How good to read this. My last post on my blog was asking that very question. I don’t want to bore readers but its very difficult to come up with either original or exciting posts (actually thats impossible!) when its essentially a blog about your business…especially a small one like mine. I know its good to reveal some of your personality but I don’t want to scare people off either. getting the balance right is very hard but I will remember the word RELEVANT when writing my next post.
How good to read this. My last post on my blog was asking that very question. I don’t want to bore readers but its very difficult to come up with either original or exciting posts (actually thats impossible!) when its essentially a blog about your business…especially a small one like mine. I know its good to reveal some of your personality but I don’t want to scare people off either. getting the balance right is very hard but I will remember the word RELEVANT when writing my next post.