Many bloggers fall into the habit of blogging only the types of content that are not easily outdated, whether it is how to articles, tips or advice types of posts. But if you do this because you feel it is more useful to visitors who might happen upon your blog years down the road, you are only doing yourself and your readers a disservice.
Sometimes readers want to know about what is considered current and newsworthy in your market area, even if the mainstream news media hasn’t picked up on it yet. Here is how to create current and relevant blog posts, especially when you tend to post entries that tend to never go out of style.
All markets are newsworthy
Just because you think of your blogging market area as never changing doesn’t mean you can skimp out on timely content. Do you have a blog about gardening? Include reviews and commentary about brand new products on the market or recently developed hybrid plants. A blog about cooking? Include reviews of new cookbooks and cooking shows or talk about a hot new cooking style. Once you think about it, there are even current newsworthy bloggable items in even market areas that seem pretty “same old”.
Breaking news
Don’t be afraid to tackle breaking news, even stories that are still updating and evolving. If you are the first blogger to report on a breaking news story, you can bet you will get a lot of traffic simply because you were the first. You can then update it and add photos, videos, eyewitness accounts, etc, if neccessary. And when you have updates consistently being added to your blog post, you can bet that people will bookmark and return to get the “latest”. It is not that difficult to become the definitive source if you commit to updating as it happens.
Before it happens
You can make connections in the industry and as a result post news stories before they are officially announced. You might get the heads up that a top company in your market area is releasing a new product or that a specific high-level person is making a jump from one company to another. If you are given the inside scoop before it becomes official, many people will end up on your blog when they are looking for information to substantiate rumors.
Hot news stories
Okay, so maybe you didn’t blog as the news was breaking, but there is no reason why you can’t do a follow-up, particularly when you are adding your own personal perspective to the story. While being first can be great, having a thoughtful and interesting post later as a retrospective, even if it is just a couple of days after the fact, can also bring you significant traffic.
Current interest
It might not be mainstream newsworthy, but sometimes there are topics that are extremely important to your niche market. Blogging about it now will also create traffic surges if that topic does cross over from niche interest to mass interest. Did you not hear anything about Bisphenol A (BPA) prior April 2008? Well, not surprising, many bloggers had been talking about it for months by the time CNN first ran a story on it.
Don’t fall victim to just publishing tried and true type of blog posts. It is often timely and currently relevant blog posts that can become most popular and the most commented entries, so don’t just restrict yourself to “top ten” or “how to” types of posts. By sticking with the same old, you will definitely be missing out on a huge audience you could be engaging. So next time you are tempted by a tried and true, counter it with something that is more timely to your audience.
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