An Acceptable Office Romance: The Love Between a Blog Editor and Their Blog

Love for your blog is a beautiful thing.

A blog editor sits down at their desk, their computer open. Their pulse quickens at the thought of the blog before them. Their pupils dilate, as they gave upon the lovely prose talking about the latest in digital marketing , the most recent trends, best practices, news, and innovation. What else would excite them so much first thing in the morning along with a cup of coffee?

But does your blog love you back? Do you receive a steady stream of content that you can publish on a regular basis? Do you keep your viewership numbers up? Are your readers clicking through on your links? Checking other posts? Downloading the infographics and guides you suggest in CTAs?

Relationships take work

As with any relationship, you have to put in the work with your blog. Do you text or call your significant other every day? How often do you meet up for lunch, dinner, or Netflix?

Bearing that in mind, how often do you work to improve your blog? Do you check the metrics? Keep in touch with contributors? Do you write blogs yourself?

How do you light the eternal flame between yourself, the blog editor, and your blog and keep it burning? How do you keep contributors sending in posts and readers coming back for information, news, tips, and thought leadership?

Nurture and care

In celebration of Valentine’s Day, make the effort to rekindle your love affair with your blog. It can serve as:

• The voice of your brand

• A collective voice of people keeping up and contributing to your brand

• A source of news

• A source of thought leadership

• A place for people to state their opinions

• A way to gauge the pulse of your audience and industry

Therefore, never take your blog for granted. It is too important to do that, and the right tender love and care can do much to use the blog to establish your brand, your voice, and set yourself up as a leader in your industry or field.

What can you to nurture and care for your blog so that it shows that it loves you back by garnering results?

• Know your audience. Who are you writing to? What topics interest them? What do they respond to?

• Check metrics. See what is working and what isn’t. Adjust accordingly.

• Engage your contributors. It’s not enough to simply kick back and wait for people to send you blog posts. Build relationships with your contributors. Tell them when a post is good and doing well with views and click-throughs. Check in with them if you haven’t heard from them in a while. Give them prompts to work with. If someone isn’t a contributor yet, but you think they have something interesting to say, reach out and ask them if they want to write a post. Also, thank everyone for contributing. Let them know that they’ve helped you. Your blog is nothing without them.

• Edit. Don’t be passive and just throw up whatever someone sends you. As a blog editor, your responsibility is to go through every post and make it’s in line with whatever your blog’s guidelines are. A blog can typically go off brand somewhat with its voice, but as the editor, it is up to you to determine what the limits and what is appropriate. Plus, there might be errors and typos the contributor didn’t catch. And nobody is perfect, and neither is any piece of writing. A post might require some rewriting, and you have to make the call whether or not to lend a hand with that or ask the contributor to do it all themselves.

• Write your own blog posts. If you’re a blog editor, odds are you possess some type of writing ability. So, why aren’t you writing your own posts? You know your industry and blog. You have something to say, so and get out there and say it. Of course, if it’s not your personal blog, if it a blog entrusted to you as a business, you have to remember it is not your vanity blog. Do not only publish yourself or put some great emphasis on yourself as opposed to your brand, the blog itself, and your writers. You are not any more important than another contributor. In fact, when it comes to scheduling and most matters pertaining to the blog, you should come last. Everyone else gets their turn first.

• Be creative. A blog is your chance to have an opinion and be more creative than you might be able to in writing ebooks, emails, and landing pages. You could try being more lighthearted, throw in some riddles, use different points of views and formats, change up the voice, celebrate anniversaries and holidays, interject some of your other interests, and experiment a little. Images, videos, webinars, graphs, cartoons, an interview format, riddles, and jokes, the sky is the limit.

• Constantly improve. Like any writing and editing project, you should always be working to tweak and improve your blog. How posts a week should there be? On what days should they go out? What topics does your audience care about more? What new ones can you try? What writers can you seek out to contribute? You have access to the metrics, so you can see what directions and approaches are working better.

Renew your vows

Keep your love fresh. You should be working on our blog in some shape or form every day. You should always be getting new posts, working on new posts, and trying out new things. It only gets old if you let it.

                                         

What else can your blog do for you? Find out with “Do More with B2B Blogging.”

See the guide.

 

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