Peripheral Vision in Blogging for Business

My Say It For You corporate blogging training company, I discovered, has a sort of counterpart in Australia – Dental Web Strategies, whose motto is “helping Australian dentists become visible online.”

Like me, Dental Web Strategies subscribes to the Hubspot blog, and in this post it’s calling attention to a recent Hubspot discussion on a topic I’ve touched on many times: how very hard it is for business owners to find time to blog on a regular basis.
 
While everyone seems to be in agreement that business blogging content needs to be posted frequently, there’s room for disagreement on just what kind of frequency is called for. Hubspot had pointed out that the schedule for an SEO marketing blog should be determined by the particular business’ “competitive needs”.

“Let’s be straight about this,” Dental Web offers, pointing out that most Australian dental websites don’t even have a blog! So, they conclude, “to decide the best schedule for your blogging efforts, it behooves you to look at the dental websites in your local area and see what the schedule for posting is for your competitors. If no one is blogging in your area, a fortnightly or monthly post would probably be all you need to stand out from your competitors.”

In other words, the recommendation is to develop “peripheral vision”, being aware of what competitors are doing “around” your area, and working to stay just one step ahead of them.

Remember that old joke about two men hiking who come upon a bear?  The first man immediately takes off his boots and starts putting on running shoes.  “What are you doing?” his buddy asks.  “You can’t outrun a bear!”  “I don’t have to,” replied the first guy.  “I just have to outrun YOU!”

In terms of getting “indexed” by search engines, blogging for business means building a type of equity, ”saving your spot” online. Your blog content writing doesn’t have to outrun “the bear” (the entire universe of providers in your field), only your own competitors.