Everyone and his dog is writing an End Of Year Round Up.
If you feel like it’s time to start on yours: please, don’t!
Apart from the fact that everyone is doing it (so it’s boring), it is a waste of your blogging time. [1. Unless you are writing a family blog in which case you will have to ignore my advice or deal with irate grandparents. Go! Round up all the cute pictures from the past year, quickly!]
Why End Of Year Round-Ups Exist.
End of year round-ups exist to sell newspapers and magazines. Newspapers are (were) ephemeral. Today’s morning edition was tonight’s fish & chip wrapper.
But blogs are not ephemeral. Your blog posts might outlast us all.
Ask yourself: Is anyone searching for an end-of year round-up of my topic? More importantly, will they be searching for it in two weeks’ time?
Do you really want to spend your time writing a me-too seasonal survey no-one will ever search for?
Or would it be a better use of your time to write what Copyblogger calls Cornerstone Content — that is, content that will keep drawing people to your blog weeks, months, even years from now?
Write for the long-term
I have Cornerstone posts that I wrote years ago. They still pull in new readers because they are full of keywords people are searching for. The readers stay because the posts contain information that helps them solve their problems.
Sometimes, after reading one of my old articles, a reader browses the blog, subscribes, trusts me with their email address. We start to create a relationship.
Why Are You Blogging?
Do you want to be able to check a box that says “Wrote a blog post today” or do you want to write something that will help you build a relationship with potential customers?
If it’s the latter, trash the End of Year Round-Up and write some Cornerstone Content instead.