A belief that many small businesses share is that delivering exceptional work will naturally attract everything necessary to support their business.

This is also one of the secrets of blogging – stay in the game, strive to create valuable, innovative and inspiring content, and everything else will fall into place.

Hardly a day goes by when I cannot point to one particular article that drives more than 50% of the traffic to this site. It’s really quite astonishing – and a function of social sharing.

Logic tells us that when you post an article your audience consumes it – and hopefully responds.

Based upon my experience, that is rarely true.

When you consistently create useful content – information that is valuable for your target audience, it seemingly rises to the surface when its time is right – effectively introducing you, your site, and your business to a new audience.

The little secret is that blogging is not a linear game.

One home run is not going to win the game. You have to keep pounding out base hits, grind out more yardage, and sink as many putts as possible.

The Secret

Over the last few weeks, this article on protecting your Facebook account from hackers has generated an enormous amount of traffic for me – one that I wrote 4 months ago.

Why? I have no idea. It could be the result of posting it on my son’s Facebook wall after he and a bunch of his college buddies were hacked.

In other words, the secret of blogging is about consistency – creating content whose value will eventually find its day.

More recently, this article on asking your customers the tough questions has generated hundreds of clicks for several days running. It was an article I was particular proud of when I wrote it, but it produced very little traffic at the time.

My Analysis

For you and me, blogging is not just about delivering the news – that’s what the big media outlets do.

For small businesses, blogging is more about planting seeds.

What is cool is those seeds have multiple lives – germinating again and again as they are shared on the social web.

Perennial Flowers

What is awesome and cool is usually transitory – it quickly fades.  As a former landscape architect and contractor, we created some amazing floral displays with annuals flowers.

They were indeed awesome – but only for a few weeks.

As a blogger, you are more interested in planting perennials – a floral show that comes back again and again.  

Annual flowers are like a one hit wonder – they have their day and quickly fade.

Perennial flowers deliver value for years to come – and your evergreen blog content does the same.

Gardeners know they cannot predict the weather, any more than you can predict the tastes, needs, and desires of your community. That’s why the foundation of your blog has to be perennial – delivering content that conceivably has value today and long into the future.

There is nothing wrong with seizing the day – capturing a relevant moment for your audience.

Though the secret to blogging is building a sustainable digital asset that delivers value again and again – often when you least expect it.

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Until tomorrow,  Jeff

Photo Credit: antonychammond