Life’s a beach – don’t let the sunset on your marketing

Summer is always fleeting, so I tired to make the most of it.  I went on an awesome family vacation at Lake Winnesquam in New Hampshire, picked up some new clients and got Inbound Marketing Certified.  However there is something big and gaping that I left out as I basked in the summer sun - I stopped blogging. I can even remember the moment I stopped.  I was sitting on the porch of my families vacation home, looking out onto the lake with my third blog post drafted on my laptop and instead of proofing and publishing I got caught up in the moments that made this summer so great. You might be thinking – this girl needs to relax; she took two months off not a big deal. Well, taking time off from any marketing efforts shouldn’t be treated lightly. Here are some reasons why:

Too much time off requires much more effort to come back.  Seriously.  I have thought about this writing this blog for at least a month.  I kept saying to myself, “OK, here is the idea, now tomorrow I will execute it and then proof my other blog.” If you hear that voice ignore it, in fact tell it where to go! Instead, do what you can in that moment, even if you create a skeleton of what you want to do it’s better than nothing and might just get you doing more.

Loss of web traffic.  Creating fresh and relevant content should be a key strategy in turning web traffic into leads.  If your not creating targeted content for your buyer persona, how would you expect to found?  The more keyword rich content you produce, will help you gain better results with the search engines and your audience. In my instance, I kept tweeting (less frequently of course) and made subtle updates to my site but my blog is where I really am creating my rich content so that should have been my main focus.

You disengage your audience. When I see the last time someone wrote a blog was months ago (shame on me!), hasn’t tweeted in weeks, or has a copywrite on their website from 2009 I start to think – this person either doesn’t know what they are doing, gave up or doesn’t care about their personal branding.  Once you start to lose your audience it’s difficult to get them back and I hope for the most part my audience is ready to bear with me and pick up where we last left off.

This blog is as much as a lesson learned, as it is an apology and a begging for forgiveness! The summer was great, but when it comes to branding you need to keep up and keep ahead of the competition. If moments come up when you feel overwhelmed, too busy or having too much fun to keep up with your marketing efforts consider the above.

If your stuck on what to write try thinking of what is going on around you and how you can turn it into a story worth sharing with your audience, this should keep you blogging without an extended absence. Now that I have gotten through this blog I must say it’s good to be back!