How to Bring Your Dead Blog Back to Life

This is the time of year when things seem dead but they really aren’t, especially in the movies. Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th. Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street.

And my personal favorite, Michael Myers from Halloween. Creepiest psycho slasher and musical score of all time.

By the way, I’m talking about the 1978 original, not Rob Zombie’s remake. Which sucked.

But rising from the dead isn’t limited to human slashers. You had a possessed doll that wouldn’t die in Child’s Play , a cat that wouldn’t die in Pet Sematary , and a car that wouldn’t die in Christine.

Of course, if these characters stayed dead, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy the many horror sequels that are snubbed at the Oscars each year. I believe Friday the 13th  is the unofficial leader with 10 total movies, not counting Freddy vs. Jason and a remake in 2009.

Believe it or not, your seemingly dead blog that hasn’t been updated in months or even years can re-emerge just as strong as a guy with a hockey goalie mask and a machete. You just need to know how to bring it back to life.

The first step is to identify the cause of death. These are the most common excuses culprits:

We got too busy and had to put the blog on the backburner.

We ran out of things to write about.

We weren’t getting anything out of it and couldn’t justify the investment.

Once you’ve identified the cause of your blog’s comatose state, figure out what needs to be done to make that dagger disappear.

If the primary cause was a lack of time, your blog was never a high priority in the first place.

If you want your blog to live, you have to treat it like the valuable business tool it can be.

The only way to make the company blog a priority and reap the rewards is to make it part of someone’s job description. Somebody needs be in charge of writing it, posting it and sharing it.

If nobody has the time, desire or ability, outsource some or all of these tasks to someone who does. Typically, the writing is the most challenging and time-consuming part of maintaining a blog.

The great thing about outsourcing is that you know the blog will be done, and done well, no matter how busy you get.

If the primary cause of your blog’s death was a shortage of topics, it was probably due to a lack of planning or a lack of familiarity with your audience.

I’ve written about how to make sure you never run out of blog topics. However, filling your editorial calendar begins with getting reacquainted with your audience.

Too many companies launch a blog or any marketing program without truly understanding who the audience is.

Get beyond basic demographics like age, gender and income. Remember, these are real people.

What are their problems, concerns and needs? What matters most to them? What keeps them up at night? What can you do to help them?

The answers to these questions should form the foundation of our editorial calendar.

If you struggled to come up with blog topics, maybe you need to cut back on the frequency. If you were blogging a few days a week, scale back to once a week. If you were blogging once a week, try every other week.

Consistency is more important than frequency, and quality is more important than quantity.

If your blog died because you weren’t seeing any results, reevaluate your strategy. If you had one.

The lack of a clear strategy could also be the reason why you struggled to come up with topics or didn’t have time to maintain the blog.

B2B and B2C Content Marketing 2015: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America , two reports produced by Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, show that organizations with a documented content marketing strategy perform better than those without.

This has been the case since they’ve been doing these annual studies. And it applies to blogs.

What are the specific goals of the company blog? How long do you expect it to take to achieve these goals? Are your goals realistic?

How will success be measured? Who is in charge of measuring the blog’s success? If your goal is to improve your search ranking, what topics and keywords are you targeting? Have you researched them?

I wrote earlier about identifying your audience. Once you’ve identified them, you need to get your blog posts in front of them.

Is your email list up to date? Are you sharing blog posts on the right social channels and group pages within those channels? Have you evaluated paid advertising options?

Developing a smart strategy takes time, research and testing. If you want your blog to come back to life and deliver results, you can’t take shortcuts.

From a technical standpoint, make sure your blog is easy to read on any desktop or mobile device.

If you expect readers to pinch, zoom and slide their way through each blog post when using their smartphones and tablets, your blog will never survive.

Use a responsive theme or create a mobile version of your website. Period.

It’s almost 2015 for goodness sake. People won’t tolerate or revisit any content that they can’t read easily on their favorite Internet-connected toys, no matter how wonderful your content is.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you can only bring your dead blog back to life if you firmly commit to it and believe in it.

This commitment and belief needs to start at the top. If each blog post is evaluated like a direct response advertising campaign, the blog won’t survive.

A blog generates revenue by building relationships, helping people and earning their trust. That doesn’t happen overnight, but the impact is much deeper and longer lasting. Each post lives online forever and can generate leads for years.

Bringing your dead blog back to life doesn’t require a bolt of lightning, a magic chant or supernatural powers. And you don’t have to wear a scary mask.

But it does require strategy, commitment and investment – if you want your audience to read and look forward to the sequels.