You may have noticed we took a break from the blog. Partially, I’ll tell the truth, we’ve just plain been busier than a cattle dog at round-up. But also because we wanted to see what would happen if we just QUIT.
We use our own site a fair amount to test what we think we know about the search engines. Having recently reached placement we felt pretty good about, we confirmed for ourselves that our current process for achieving and holding rank was solid. So what would happen if the only thing we changed was to simply stop tending our blog? After all, it happens to our clients; they do everything right, get a solid site designed and built, push on the flywheel of promotion until the machine is whizzing along…and then something happens. Crisis. Emergency. Busy season. Staff changes. So what happens if you just STOP?
A lot!
The first thing we noticed was a steep drop-off of our Facebook fan activity. You social networkers are a fickle bunch! We expected that; social networking is about building relationships. Without our giving you meaningful substance, It isn’t surprising you forgot about us. Businesses should be forgotten if they stop giving you something you want and/or need. We responded by posting directly to our Facebook page and those stats went back up, but not as high as when our blog is also pushing posts to our wall. You effectively told us you want our meatier content as well as our more amusing observations and anecdotes when it comes to Facebook.
But what about our website stats? We had a drop in return visitors; there wasn’t anything new for folks to read so they stopped coming to look for it. We had a slight drop in new visitors; I would expect that to continue to decline if we don’t start posting again since new visitors largely come to us from sharing of our posts by our customers and fans/friends. The ‘stickiness’, or amount of time people spend on our site per visit, actually increased. Were you looking for something interesting to read, since there wasn’t that something new?
The most important thing we learned is that our most engaged customers noticed we were gone–and told us so. While I could make a pithy statement about you being the people we write for, I’ll refrain from stroking your ego while saying exactly that. You ARE who we write for because you most align with our mission and core values. By being engaged, you’re more fun to work with, you get more results from our joint efforts, and you make more profit for both your company and ours. We write for you because you put our words to work and we both reap the rewards.
To those of you who missed us: Thank You!
To those of you who didn’t: Why not? Are you ready to up your engagement level and let us help you improve return on investment (I’m just sayin’…grin)? Or maybe there are topics you’d be more interested in having us write about? If so, we’d love to hear from you.
Keleigh
