Life support. I can imagine that’s not a good place to be. Yes, humans and animals get sick and hover near death. Sad to report that many blogs have taken a turn for the worse.
How would you recognize the warnings signs that your blog is heading towards the Pearly Gates of the Blogosphere? Is St. Peter waiting for your blog?
When do you seriously consider pulling the plug?
Think about these 7 tell-tale signs:
1. My blog is updated every two weeks, or every three months, depending on when the TV reality shows are on hiatus.
2. My blog is all about me. Hey, my name and mug shot are on the top. Who else would I want to spotlight?
3. My blog has links that lead to dead-ends and expired pages. I’ve been too busy to deal with those small details (see No. 1)
4. My blog has posts with word counts of 3,961, give or take. I’ve been told I’ll appear smarter if I write more. Repetition is wonderful when it comes to word count.
5. My blog is quite humble. I don’t like to brag and self-promote. I’m sure those search engines and that Google thingie will bring readers my way. I’m not looking to be an overnight success. I’m good behind the scenes. Really.
6. My blog is consistent in it’s appearance. All the colors, graphics, and fonts are from a template my 12-year-old neighbor designed. How cool is that? I couldn’t afford one of those flashy web consultants. Who needs white space, a theme, and snappy headlines? And what the hell is WordPress anyway?
7. My blog is easy to maintain. I turned off the response option so no one can comment. It’s working out great for me. Low-maintenance is good.
Oh no, is that a flat line?
(Photo Credit: David Armano)
I think your comments are also true for websites in general.
Yes, Beth, I agree -websites and blogs have to be fluid and current. Static and stale are not engaging.
Thanks for mentioning it!
Susan
Hi Sue,
In working with career transition clients, they sometimes share their web and blog links with me. Unfortunately, those sites often are dated with blog posts recorded weeks, months or even a year ago, and what copy there is, seems lifeless or rambling.
What a value-add to their career messaging to invest the time and resources (e.g., hire a web consultant) to lift their presence and spur career opportunity rewards.
I enjoy your blog messages and your regular Twitter updates.
Best,
Jacqui
Then again, which is worse: stale content, or content that is obviously written just to avoid “staleness?”
I’d rather have a 2-month-old post worth reading (in my opinion) than a 5-minute-old one that isn’t worth the disk space it takes up.
I had to check and make sure none of them applied to me. One might have applied to one of my blogs for a while (not posting for a long time).