I have this thought I have tweeted out a couple of times that talks about people who blog what is trendy versus what is forward thinking.
http://twitter.com/gumbystation/status/750688520172343296
The original idea behind the post is from my whole adage that quality of content should be what drives a blog, not the traffic. As soon as it becomes about traffic, your site no longer has a target and the content typically goes towards puff pieces.
Recently I had to eat what I was dishing out. Here’s some context.
New and Exciting
I still have this old frame of mind from when I was a youth director and blogging about youth ministry. When I see something amazing, I instantly see if it has ministry potential and then try to maximize that. If you’ve been living under a rock, a new game came out called Pokémon Go that I gave a shot. The day it released I saw the potential and needed to do a quick write up because I wanted to show how churches could use this.
The Problem
The problem is that ChurchMag has a whole editorial process. We need to not only write up an article that will be published, but have it be edited, setup for marketing, and then scheduled out. I am not the only writer and we currently have over twenty articles pending and another twelve or more scheduled out for the week. So I needed to sit on it and wait.
Of course, I was not the only person who saw the ministry potential. Steve Fogg, Aaron Earls, and Kevin Hendricks all wrote about it as well.
The difference is they could streamline the process and hit publish right away.
It’s Not About Blogging About Now, But About What’s Next
This sitting and waiting was uncomfortable. You should see me complaining on the Slack back channel. “Eric, look, they posted it too! Uggh.”
But in that time, I had a gut check. It’s not about posting for the sake of traffic. I mean, that’s what helps pay the bills for our hosting, so it’s important. But that’s not our content strategy. And within this one post, I lost sight of that. Everyone else was already posting about it, at this point, my article was just another “me too” article. It’s not about being trendy and blogging for today. The focus is on the content and on the readers.
Define What Your Strategy For You
This philosophy of blogging long-form content that develops momentum instead of adding to the noise and coast is what I strive for, it’s my motivation and guidelines when I blog, and the strategy that has been laid out for ChurchMag. Our focus is on you the readers and the conversation we want to have. Me writing about this takes nothing away from those who wrote about the mobile game because I do not know their strategy they have laid out for their blog. I hope it was within the lanes of what they had established for themselves and they are sticking to their commitment.
As a blogger, I hope you are doing the same. Define what your strategy is. Even better, define also what your strategy is not. This allows you to begin to cut the fat, not waste time on needless content, and make what you are writing add to the overall brand you are establishing with your website.
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