Take Pride in What You Do: Share Your Work Through Your Blog

If you’ve had the—absolute—pleasure of working with us before, you’ll know that most of the team at Sustainable Digital has a background in writing, with each one of us focusing on a different niche.

Our love for, and understanding of, writing as a tool to share knowledge and passion, combined with our expertise in digital marketing, puts us in a unique position: to act as your guide when it comes to making your website flourish through your own writing and/or news updates.

One of the common concerns we hear from clients when it comes to keeping a blog on their website is the commitment to maintaining it. We hear you. A lot of folks made a strong start with a couple of blogs pushing 2000 in the wordcount, only to find they couldn’t keep up with that pace.

And now here they are, five years later with two blog posts dating back to 2020 and their pandemic ambitions, and nothing new to show. The world started turning again, things sped up, life happened—and that’s just how it goes.

But we’d like to show you that you can set simple, attainable goals to help maintain your blog. Little things you can do and ideas you might consider to help you show off the work you do as a small business or nonprofit organization. Blog posts that don’t take too much time, brainpower or resources, but still do the job in letting you take pride in your work and convincing Google to do the same.

The Real Purpose of Keeping a Blog

There are different ways to look at the real purpose behind keeping a blog on your website.

Blogging for SEO: Keeping Google Happy

In terms of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and nurturing a happy and healthy relationship with search engines, the obvious answer is populating your website with valuable content. As with any good relationship, you want to demonstrate that you are putting in the effort and are worthy of their admiration and support. By regularly publishing a blog post, you are proving that you are willing to work hard at not falling into a rut, and are doing your best to keep things fresh.

By updating the blog regularly, you’re also letting Google know that your site is alive and well—and actively offering new content for users. Google tends to reward this kind of consistency and sees it as a signal that your website is trustworthy, current, and worth showing in search results.

What’s more, each blog post is an opportunity to target a specific keyword or search intent. While your main service pages are usually focused on broader or higher-priority terms, your blog allows you to go after those longer-tail or niche keywords that your audience is still searching for. Over time, this helps build topical authority and brings in traffic from multiple angles—all while keeping your content ecosystem natural and relevant.

Blogging for Connection: Showing Who You Are

In keeping Google satisfied, you are already doing a whole lot to benefit your organization. On an internal level though, you are connecting with your (potential) customers and followers in a way that is personal, informative and—if you’re willing to get creative about it—entertaining.

This is a platform through which you can go beyond focusing on the business side of things and give people a sense of who you and your team really are. This doesn’t mean you have to go into storytelling mode—just adopting a more casual tone in your blog will already make it feel more personal.

Where to Source Blog Ideas & Content

Now you might be thinking, ‘Ok, you make a good case. But how will I find the time to come up with good blog ideas?’. First of all, thanks.

Secondly: we can assure you that you have a wealth of potential blog content right at your fingertips. It’s all about finding the right way to use it and spin it into something informative and interesting with a good CTA. Let’s take a look at some of the best content sources that are readily available to you and just waiting to be turned into a blog post.

Check Your Calendar

What’s coming up? Will your organization be attending or hosting any events anytime soon? Do you have a team-building day coming up or are you in the throes of planning your company summer party? Are you supporting a good cause as a team?

These are all things your clients and website visitors will be interested in reading about. It gives them insight into who you are, what you care about and what you’re doing to create an inspiring and supportive work environment.

So—if you’ve got anything good coming up, approach it with the intention of documenting it with pictures, possible quotes and key moments. You’ll see, the blog will write itself and will also be a nice way for you to reflect.

Highlight Key Projects

If you’re working on a project that perfectly illustrates your work process and exemplifies your organization’s mission and vision, talk about it. What is it that makes this your ideal project? What excites you about it? What challenges are you facing and how can you demonstrate the innovative ways with which your team overcomes these?

Think about this as an opportunity to offer an extended case study—an inside look at how you’re tackling the kind of projects you’d like more of.

Spotlight Team Members

Each team member brings something special to the table and, through a monthly blog post, you have the opportunity to spotlight exactly what that is. This, again, is a fun and interactive way to engage with your clients and followers in a personal manner and offer the positive feedback your team members deserve.

This might be especially appreciated by employees who work behind-the-scenes (designers, SEO specialists, etc.) and don’t always get the recognition they deserve. Here’s your chance—write about their best qualities; ask them what they most enjoy about their work and their team, and how they like to spend their time outside of the office.

Find Newsworthy Links

What is happening in your industry? Is there a new product on the market that could drastically change the way you work? Have there been new political developments that could affect your organization? If so, are there ways to fight them?

Any news that (in)directly applies to your field of work can be used to spark a conversation through your blog.

Let’s say you’re in the educational sector: talk about the challenges you’re facing under the new administration and how website visitors can help. Are you a nonprofit focused on environmental issues? Talk to the layman and point us towards how we can effectively reduce our own impact.

The Perfect Wordcount

…does not exist! It really doesn’t. Each blog article is different, serving a different purpose and a different reader.

Say you’re writing a profile on one of your employees—we understand you have a lot of love and respect for them, but 1200 words might be overkill. You’ll want to keep it short and snappy, think: 300 words from you, a 100-word direct quote from the employee in question, plus—just for kicks—a little Q&A set up (favorite hobbies, most-loved book, or something that relates closely to your organization’s focus). We’re talking 500 to 600 words max, here.

When it comes to deep-dives into certain topics such as in-depth how-tos or research, this is where your articles might range between 800-2000 words. More if you’ve got a lot to say, and credible sources to back your arguments up with.

The most important thing to remember for long-format blogs, is that the set up needs to be easily-digestible and attractive for the reader. Break it up into sections with intriguing and straight-forward headlines, and beautify the layout with related images.

Longer blog posts are, of course, better for SEO purposes, but that doesn’t mean that’s what you need to aim for all the time.

Ideal Blog Posting Frequency

One of the major factors that puts people off writing a blog, is the misconception behind the ideal posting frequency. Ever changing algorithms have kind of drilled it into us that we should always be operating on “the more, the better” mode, but that is no longer the case.

We have moved on from the era of keyword stuffing and posting blogs and social media content for the mere sake of posting. What matters now, more than ever, is quality over quantity.

It is much more important to show you have authority and expertise and to do so, quite frankly, less is often more.

In other words, if you can commit to just one blog post a month, that’s great—as long as it offers quality content. By giving yourself the time to create a blog article, rather than churning one out in a rush just to meet a self-imposed deadline, you are actually doing yourself—and your readers—a big favor. Don’t restrict yourself by putting unnecessary pressure on yourself; free yourself by going at a pace that is comfortable and sustainable to you.

How We Can Help

 We hope this article helped to convince you of the many advantages that come with running a blog and that—believe it or not—it can be really fun too!

If you need a little help to get you going, we are more than happy to schedule a call with you to identify the resources you already have at your disposal to start building your blog. If you need a lot of help starting out, or would like us to maintain it, we’re here for that too.

Let’s look at the style of content that could best benefit you and set up a strategy that will grow your blog steadily and efficiently.

Whatever it is you need—a consultation or a full content writing package—we want to encourage you to take pride in the work you do and show it off in a way that creates engaging content.

Now—where would you like to start?