MBA2387 Q&A Wednesday: Is blogging dead? Should I just focus on video content?

0:08Heyo! Welcome to the$100 MBA show, practical business lessons delivered on a silver platter. That's what we do here on the podcast. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zinhome. I'm also the co-founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started back in 2014. And today's episode is Q &A Wednesday. On Q &A Wednesdays, we answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you've got a question you want to ask, go ahead and email me over at omar at 100mba.net. Today's question is from Fred, and Fred asks, I've been running my business for about two years, and since I've started, I've been blogging once a week.

0:45My question is, is blogging dead? Should I focus on creating more video content to post on social media? I'm asking because I have to post every week to stay consistent, and I'm not really sure if it's worth my time anymore. Would love your take. Thanks for the question, Fred. There are no bad questions here on The$100 RBA Show because we want to help you move forward in your business. And if you have a question, it's a blocker. It's blocking you from progressing. So Fred is asking, should I keep on blogging? Do I need to keep on blogging or should I just create more video content and post it on social media?

1:18Is blogging dead? Well, I'll be answering it in today's episode and showing Fred how to find out for himself if it's worth his while, if it's actually helping his business. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. I want to start by talking about content creation. Whatever medium you choose to create in, whether it's writing like blogging or video creation or podcasting or whatever it might be, choose a medium that you actually enjoy, that you actually look forward to doing, that is a challenge to you, that you want to grow in, that you want to feel like you're getting better at every day.

1:51And if blogging seems like a chore to you and you don't want to do it anymore, then maybe you shouldn't because the content you're going to create is not going to be stellar. It's not going to be great if you're hating the process. So you have a couple of choices in that situation. You can either hire somebody else to do it, to ghostwrite for you and write blog posts for your business, or you can just stop doing it. You can just stop doing it and get traffic in other ways. Now, to help you in the decision, you need to gather some evidence. You need to gather some facts. This is where you need to check your analytics, your Google Analytics.

2:22You should have this installed on your website where you can check out what are the most popular pages, posts that are being found organically through search on your website. And for most people, the number one page is their homepage because people Google your business, Google your keywords, and they find you. Maybe there's another page or two on the actual website, like the about page or the pricing page that will show up. But beyond their second or third page, if you start seeing some blog posts, that means you're getting free traffic because people are finding your website through the content you're creating in your blog.

2:56I can say this for the$100 MBA that many, many hundreds of thousands of visitors come through our blog because they're searching for a topic and we rank and we actually provide great content. So they kind of enter our ecosystem or learn about us through a Google search and then our blog posts show up. So if you look at your analytics and you find out, wow, I'm actually getting a lot of traffic through my blog posts. Are you willing to sacrifice that traffic? Even if it's just 100 new visitors through your blog post every month, that's 100 people that are not hitting your website. How are you going to get those 100 people outside of your blog?

3:31With platforms like Instagram and TikTok that really push video and reels, it's not that easy to get traffic back to your website. It's a little bit tedious for them to go to your bio, find the link, click the link in bio. Often it's like a link tree link and they have to find out what link is, the one they're looking for. And it's just far too many steps versus somebody searching on Google, finding the answer to their question through your blog post, and of course, finding it and clicking through. So keep in mind that sometimes when we're in these predicaments, the grass is always growing on the other side.

4:04Now, YouTube is a little bit different. If you're publishing videos on YouTube, descriptions are filled with links. People often click those links in descriptions. but overall if it's impacting your traffic these blog posts that you're publishing then you should definitely find somebody else to do these blog posts to create these blog posts that can understand your voice understand your message if it's generating traffic you don't have to do if you don't enjoy it get somebody else who does enjoy writing and will create great content because they do enjoy it yes video has become very popular yes audio has become very popular and it's a growing trend but the internet is primarily still searched via text and if you can find a way to get people to your website.

4:42This is where you do business. This is where business happens. This is where you collect money. This is where their end goal is, where you want them to get to your website is just a couple of clicks away through a search. That's a really valuable asset of your business you want to keep. Now, I do want to say that blogging is not an overnight success. I know you've been doing it for two years, Fred, who's asked this question, but it can take much longer to start seeing results on certain blog posts. I have blog posts that I wrote 10, 12 years ago that are now starting to pick up steam and get us traffic.

5:12So I think that you really should see this as a long-term investment. Many of the blog posts that we've written over the years don't really get traction, don't really start to pick up steam and get us regular high levels of traffic until we're four, five, six years in. Because over time, the more people find your actual link, your blog post, through a search, and they sit on that site, they read the article, Google knows this, and they index this. And the more this happens over and over and over time, and the longer that post has been around, the website's been around, the more that Google gives it credibility.

5:47And therefore, it's ranked higher. It shows up more often and helps your business, not only when it starts getting traction, but beyond. So understand this is an investment, and it's one of those investments that's going to pay back. It just takes time. I also want to add, if you look at your analytics and you feel like you're not really getting the results, despite the fact you wrote an article a week for two years, You need to start thinking about the quality of your writing. The best quality articles always get found. Google is super, super smart. So is Bing, so is DuckDuckGo, all the other search engines.

6:19It's hyper, hyper intelligent and knows when articles are actually high quality. Even before people start reading them and generating traffic for you, it's hyper intelligent. And the better quality of your articles, the actual articles solve a problem. and actually address the topic of the article very well, the better it's going to do. So you might want to revisit your blog and improve the quality of the articles. Go more in depth, add more multimedia, add some videos to that blog post, some images, some graphs, give some case studies, some examples. Enrich your blog post with more information to make it more valuable and more practical for your readers.

6:59I highly recommend you audit your blog at least once a year because this will allow you to not only take a look at what's working, what's not, but improve what isn't and even improve the stuff that is working, making it even better. Now, this is not to say that video content is a waste of time. I'm a big fan of video content. I produce a lot of videos, not only for social, but for the website, for training, for articles, live video webinars, you name it. NVIDIA, in my opinion, is an important part of your content marketing strategy, but it's a part of your content marketing strategy. It's not the whole content marketing strategy.

7:33It's like saying weightlifting is good for your health. That's true. It's a part of good health. So is cardio. So is eating well. So is walking. In combination of all these things, you have a healthy body. And the same thing goes with a content marketing strategy. When you have great blog posts, when you have a great video, long form, short form, when you have great live video, when you have great audio with podcasting, this allows you to hit your audience in different angles, with different modalities, because people like to learn in different ways. This is why you'll see a lot of bestselling authors write a great book, but they'll also have the audiobook version, but they'll also do an online course of the book, incorporating video, and they'll speak about the book on stages in real life.

8:15Doing this from different angles allows your business to grow because you're not leaving anybody behind. All your audience members, regardless of how they like to learn, can have access to your knowledge, to your information, to your content. So if you like doing video content, start creating some videos for social media, like I mentioned. And if you don't like blogging, maybe get somebody else to do it, even just part-time, five hours a week, one blog post a month, or even just to audit and refresh and improve your blog posts that you already have. But whatever you do, commit to the long-term to produce this type of content.

8:48When I started this podcast, I committed. I knew that I'm going to be doing this for years. This is not something I'm going to try out, something I'm just going to try out because it doesn't work that way. You have to commit to it so you can get better, so the content can get better, so the show can grow. I'm over nine years in now, and I can tell you over the last nine years, the show has grown and improved and has hit all these great milestones and awards, and we've had over 250 million downloads. That's so hard for me to even comprehend, but it's because I stuck with it, consistency, and that consistently allows me to get better as a podcaster and allows me to create better podcast episodes, better content and allow me to get better at delivering that content and putting it out there to the world and marketing that content.

9:31It's just the constant reps. And it only happens if you commit. If I was wishy-washy about it, if I did it and I took a break for a year, then came back to it, it'd be a totally different result. I am sure of it. So I'm a pick and stick guy. Pick something, stick to it. You want to add something to your rotation, make sure you stick to it so that you start seeing results in the long term. Thanks so much, Fred, for that great question on Q &A Wednesday. If you've got a question you want to ask, go ahead and email me at omar at 100mba.net. You can let me know if you want me to mention your name, just your first name.

10:02Happy to give you a shout out to your business if you'd like, or I can keep it anonymous if you'd like. Just let me know in the email and I'll make sure to answer your question right here on Q &A Wednesday. If you love the show, let us know. We would love to hear it in a rating and review, whether you're on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. I read every single review and it's a great way for me to learn what you love about the show so I can keep doing that. Thanks in advance for doing that, taking a minute to review the show. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Once you choose the type of content you want to create, whether it's podcasting or video or blogging or whatever it is, choose the frequency that you feel like you can comfortably be consistent with.

10:37So don't push yourself and say, I'm going to write a blog post a day. Can you comfortably do that even when you're not feeling it, when you're tired, when you're sick, when you're away, when you're on holiday or are you more comfortable with once every month? The consistency is more important than the volume because if it's consistently good quality content, it will help you and your business more than just churning out information and content because you have to. Better, not more is the rule I like to follow. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in Friday's episode. I'll see you then.

11:10Take care.

11:15Thank you.