Blogger Inflation: How Much is Enough, How Much is too Much?

Blogging is an inexpensive but effective way to drive traffic to your website. There are many free blogging solutions out there, such as Wordpress and Blogger, that can serve the majority of your organizational needs. Free tools are great, we love free tools, they are a fantastic start for new business and causes; the biggest problem we see is blogger inflation.

So let's address the first question: how much is enough? Unfortunately there is no simple answer:

- When you are first starting out you are going to have a lot more to say because you haven't had a forum to espouse your business or organization's principles yet. Blog often, keep them short, write like you would want to read, not like you think people should read about the subject.

- If you have made your foray into the blogosphere and you are feeling a little more comfortable with your reading public you may want to blog a little less. Supply and demand applies to everything; blog enough to keep it relevant but not so much that the people that actually enjoy reading your blog can't keep up.

- The exception to the rule is a buzz: if you are rapidly gaining followers you need to blog a little more often than you have been blogging. If you are skilled (or lucky) enough to generate a buzz about your business or cause make sure that you are keeping people up to date with your products, events, and/or any developments in your organization. Blogging is a fickle mistress: it requires a smart balance to do things right, but when you find your sweet spot you'll know.

Over blogging can drive traffic away from your business, this is also true with micro-blogs (e.g. Twitter). Here are a couple of options for keeping things fresh on your page to keep people coming back:

1. Re-post for another organization or business.

- This is a great way to build partnerships. If you have nothing to blog about look to some of the others in your field or community. If it something that you think will be of interest in your own community, contact the host of the blog and ask if you can re post (in part or in whole) for them. Often times other bloggers will even agree to re-post for you in the future to return the favor. This is most common with smaller blogs and it make take a few re-posts before some of the more mainstream feeds will re-post for you.

2. Pull an entry from another one of your blogs.

- At an organization that I worked with in the past we had a very strong emphasis on social networking; so strong in fact that we often started a new blog for every event that we had. We would encourage live blogging during our events as well as remote blogging for those that could not attend or chose to participate via online meeting software. When an event was over we would send out an email blast thanking everybody for participating and inviting them to blog about their experience. We would often pull from the live entries as well as the congratulatory thanks-for-the-memories-posts that we would get after the event. This kept our main organizational blog fresh and also served to incorporate the community we built at that event into our main network.

So remember bloggers: keep it light, keep it fresh, and you'll keep them coming back.

Jim Bialick is the Technical Director of Bialick/Turpin & Associates: a Washington, DC based marketing technology consulting firm that specializes in solutions for any budget. Learn more at www.bialickturpin.com.