Day 31 – Thus the 31 Day Blog Writing Challenge ends… some thoughts for businesses

31 days ago, I challenged  bloggers to write a blog post a day! Over 80 bloggers took up the challenge. Some of them did it and blogged every day for 31 days straight! YAY!

Some people wonder why this challenge is done during December, ostensibly the busiest month of the year for obligations and business and family and everything the holidays bring.  Well, I have always said, if you can blog everyday during that, then you can blog anytime.

I also heard some grumbles from a few people about how they don’t know what to blog about.  Yet we seem to find time to post on social media for a good portion of our day, and tell everyone there what’s going on with us.  Some of us remember when blogs were all we had to tell the internet what was going on with us.

Here’s two reasons that if you are in the quilt business (or any art business, or are thinking of being in the art/quilt business), why you should be blogging regularly.

#1.  You don’t own Facebook, but you can own your own website and the blog that is upon it.  Facebook could shut down tomorrow.  Instagram could go belly up.  Remember Vine?  It had mega “Vine famous” stars and millions of users.  It closed and those brands scrambled to find a place to house their content and their fans.  But your social media should never take the place of your own website and messaging you want your fans to see, and that’s what many businesses do.  They only post now on platforms that could disappear, and they spent a lot of time and trouble gaining thousands of followers that could be gone in an instant.   So always put the work into your site/your blog, and direct people there.

#2.  Search Engine Optimization.  You hear about “SEO” all the time as being super important, and the reason is this. People use Google to search for “quilting” and “heirloom sewing” and all the rest, and you want your site, like I want mine, to be one of the first things that come up.  So Google has an algorithm to show you content, but it also makes sure it’s FRESH content, and recently updated.  So let’s say you had a website and an active blog, but then you started making your updates on your FB page and Instagram instead.  Now your website is “stale”.  Posting often, refreshing your pages, this is the #1 way to remain in the top ranking pages of SEO.

As someone who teaches social media marketing to quilters I hear the excuses all the time.  Your website is the only thing you own 100%.  So update it often, talk to your audience, and I hope to see you in the 2019 31 Day Blog Writing Challenge!