"Content is king" has been one of the most frequently repeated phrases in marketing this year. It appears in marketing presentations, in guest posts about SEO and in agency proposals to small businesses. Bill Gates used it as the title of an essay in 1996, so the idea is not new. At present, however, it comes with a specific instruction for small businesses: blog every day if possible, and several times a week at minimum.
For a dive centre without marketing staff, this advice is not realistic. The people who could write are also teaching, operating the boat, repairing a compressor and answering the phone. A daily blog typically lasts about two weeks. The last post then remains on the site, dated, for a year, signalling to every visitor that the business has stopped maintaining it.
The question is therefore not whether content matters; it does. The question is what a small team can sustain.
How often should a small business blog?
For most small businesses, we recommend two posts a month.
Two posts a month amounts to twenty-four a year, which forms a substantial library after twelve months. This is sufficient to show Google and visitors that the site is active, and modest enough that one person can complete it during a quieter afternoon without disrupting the rest of the business.
More frequent posting would be beneficial, but consistency matters more than volume. A blog that publishes twice a month for three years will outperform one that publishes daily for a month and then stops. We have not yet observed an exception, and we have been following business blogs since our agency years in Vancouver.
The key is to schedule the work like any other task, for example on the first and third Monday of each month, rather than "when time allows". In a small business, free time rarely appears; only scheduled tasks get done.
Where should blog topics come from?
Your customers' questions. The most difficult part of a blog is not the writing but choosing the topics. Many small teams, faced with a blank screen, produce "news" that readers did not request, such as a new boat or new Sunday opening hours.
The best source is at the front desk: your customers' questions form your editorial calendar.
Every question a guest asks by email, by phone or at the counter is a question other people are typing into Google. At a dive centre, examples include whether you can dive with a cold, the water temperature in August, how the Open Water course is divided across the days and what to do about seasickness on the boat. Each of these is a post: short, useful, written in plain language and answering the question fully.
Since Hummingbird, Google's major algorithm change in September, this approach is even more relevant. Google seeks to match complete questions with pages that answer them. A post titled with the question people actually ask, followed by a clear answer, corresponds precisely to what Google is looking for.
How can questions be collected?
- Keep a notebook at the front desk and record each new question word for word.
- Review your sent emails once a month. A question answered three times is a post.
- Ask your staff which questions they hear most often.
This approach offers an additional benefit. Once the post is published, the answer is available. The next time someone asks, you can send the link. The blog then saves time rather than consuming it.
Should you update older posts or write new ones?
Updating older posts is the practice most small blogs neglect, partly because its benefits are gradual.
Most small business blogs treat a post as finished once it is published. Information, however, becomes outdated: prices, schedules and regulations change. A two-year-old post showing the wrong price is more harmful than no post, because it leads to disputes at the counter.
An older post that already ranks also has advantages a new post lacks: history, links and a degree of trust. Updating it, correcting errors, adding what has been learned since and clarifying the answer often produces better results than writing something entirely new. Google consistently states that it favours useful, current pages written for people rather than for search engines. Its guidance on creating helpful, people-first content is short and worth reading.
We recommend reviewing older posts once or twice a year. Which ones still receive visits? Are they still accurate? Can they be improved? Address those first, before writing anything new that month.
Who should write the posts?
Ideally, someone within the business: the owner, a senior instructor or the person who knows the customers best. The voice matters. Readers can quickly tell whether a post was written by the person who took them diving or by a content farm on another continent paid by the word.
Google appears to share this view. Its authorship markup, which displays a writer's photo next to a search result, links a post to a real person with a Google+ profile. The long-term form of this feature is uncertain, but the principle behind it is likely to endure: Google wants to know who wrote a piece of content and whether that person has expertise in the subject.
If no one within the business has the time, a professional writer can help. The questions and the expertise must nevertheless come from the team. A competent external writer interviews you for twenty minutes and produces a post that reflects your voice. A less competent one produces generic filler, which is currently widely sold for a few dollars per post.
If your guests speak two languages, both versions should be written with equal care. People ask their own questions in their own words, and a rapid machine translation of the English post will not answer them as they were asked. This is why bilingual copywriting is a distinct discipline.
Is content still king?
Partly. Content that answers a real person's real question has always performed well. Content produced only to fill a schedule is filler, and in our assessment Google is steadily improving its ability to distinguish between the two.
Two posts a month, based on real questions and kept up to date, is not a dramatic approach, but it is effective. Further articles on these topics are available in the other posts on this blog, published on a similar schedule.