Put Up Or Shut Up

My friend–author, speaker, and general instigator Chris Lema–quoted me in his blog yesterday:

My friend Sé Reed, of WPwatercooler fame, works with small businesses and helps them get online. She’s seen hundreds (if not thousands) of clients at the Small Business Development Center and she reminds them of the same thing I’m going to tell you here.

Folks that blog more than 20 times in a month see 500% of the traffic that those who blog 4 times or less in a month do.

It’s true. I do remind them of that. In fact, I tell it to rooms full of small business owners every month.

“Look, guys,” I say. “It’s not about what your cat ate for dinner. It’s about showing what your business is about. It’s about sharing your knowledge. It’s about creating content.”

That’s true, too. Google eats content for breakfast. And content is also pretty popular with humans.

In fact, content is the only reason people visit websites.

At least, that’s what they’re hoping to find. And the content they find, or don’t find, dictates what they do, or don’t do, next. If you’re a shop without directions to your location, that customer probably isn’t going to stop by. If you’re a restaurant and you don’t have a menu, that customer probably isn’t going to come try your food.

“Think about how you use the internet,” I tell them. “When you go to a website, you’re looking for some sort of information, right? And if you don’t find it, you leave.”

They always agree. Because it’s true.

And yet. And yet the link to my site in a post about blogging, quoting back to me a stat about the benefits of blogging I’ve been preaching for the last year … that link was, for all intents and purposes, a link to an empty blog.

Oh, the irony.

I’m never been scared of writing. I have a Bachelor’s degree in journalism. I love words. I love websites. And I don’t have a shortage of ideas. But I don’t have a shortage of excuses, either. “I have to finish those designs for that client.” “I have to update to 3.5.1 first.” “I have to walk the dogs … ”

It’s all the same excuses I hear from my clients. The same excuses I encourage them to get past, the ones I push them through, telling them it won’t just help their SEO, but their business development. They will inspire themselves, I tell them. They will connect to their business. And it’s true. They will. And they do.

And yet I don’t.

So, having been brought so blatantly face-to-face with my apparent do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do behavior, I cannot simply push it back onto the back burner. It is time, as the saying goes, to put up or shut up.