Cleaning Out Your Blog Topic Closet

While trying on clothes at a couple of new shops in Fishers and Carmel, I couldn’t help thinking about a blog post I’d written almost six years ago about the Goodwill Guy and Clothes You Shouldn’t Wear.

You’ve probably seen those Goodwill ads. The principle is, there are four kinds of clothes, and only one of those kinds should stay in your closet. The other three – the clothes you can’t wear, the clothes you don’t wear, and of course the Clothes You Shouldn’t Wear – should be going to Goodwill (so that someone who should be wearing them, can.

I’d categorized blog post content the same way.  (I’ve thought this whole thing through again and reworked some of my ideas with the benefit of six years of hindsight)…

Posts you don’t blog might include (but perhaps should):

• Posts that would take some  real time to research
• Strong opinion pieces
• How-to instructions (fear readers might go DIY on you)

Posts you really can’t write:

• Information that is not related to your topic
• Topics that are too broad and really outside the scope of your expertise

Posts you really shouldn’t present to your readers:

• Information that is overly technical for the average reader
• Negative remarks about competitors
• Posts that are too general, repeating the common wisdom with nothing of your own “slant”

So then, what sort of posts absolutely DO belong in your blog “closet”?

• Employee posts, created by real people who are actually doing the work and talking to your customers
• Testimonials from customers and clients
• True tales of problems you’ve actually helped solve for your customers
• Wisdom from other sources that can be useful to your readers

Clutter” in blogs is actually a positive. There’s only so much room for clothes in even the most spacious closet, but once I’ve put content on this Say It For You blog, for example, it can remain on the Internet forever.  (This post is actually #1052 for me, yet all my 1,151 past blog posts haven’t disappeared. All that content remains, available to readers in reverse chronological order, a very good thing when it comes to “winning search” online!)

Hate to say this, but it’s perhaps not our blog that needs periodic de-cluttering, it’s us.
As we continue blogging month after month, year after year, we need to be our own Goodwill Guys –

What sort of posts are we writing, but perhaps shouldn’t be (or at least not so often)?

What posts have we been lazy about that absolutely belong in our blog?