As I logged in tonight to work on a blog post, I took a quick peek at a few other blogs I follow, or at least read off and on. While looking at the dates of the last few blog posts, I realized most of them hadn’t been updated in months.
The discovery lead me to wonder how long the average blogger keeps up their trade. I wouldn’t be myself if I didn’t share a few pieces of info with you.
First, is an older post from problogger.net that analyzes the age of the top 100 blogs from Technorati back in 2006. Although the post is old, I wouldn’t be surprised if the analysis is still pretty close to accurate. The average age of the blogs in the top 100 was only 33.8 months.
Second, and perhaps more telling, is this article from The New York Times. Based on data (again, from Technorati), this article shares that 95% of blogs are abandoned or not updated within the past 4 months.
Why? The truth of the matter is that keeping a blog going is a lot of work. Without dedicated resources, clear expectations and strategy to guide blogging, it’s very easy to run out of content or just flat out loose interest. Not to mention, when running a blog for a firm, turnover plays a factor. If one person on staff is the “keeper of the blog” then the blog is pretty likely to die when they leave the firm.
I’m not 100% serious when I say that an AEC firm shouldn’t start a blog, only 95%…(kidding). But I do stand firmly by the belief that nothing in marketing is worth doing if you can’t sustain it. I would never recommend beginning a monthly newsletter unless there were resources committed to keep it going. A blog can have even more of a need for content, and doesn’t automatically start with an opted-in list of readers.
Building traffic takes time, building content takes commitment, and building a reputation through your blog takes being a part of that top 5%.
I definitely agree. Sustainability is the number one consideration when starting a blog… or else it will just have its own natural death… death of your visions as some people may perceive.
Thanks so much for the comment and the read Anon!