Many small businesses start blogs to increase SEO, to keep in touch with customers, to create community among people in their industry and to show leadership in their niche. I am working with several clients to create blog posts, and they always ask me, “How many times a week should I post?”

One of my new favorite blogs, Men with Pens, announced yesterday that they are cutting back on the number of posts. “We’ve realized something very important: People are busy. They try to keep up with favorite blogs but they become overwhelmed. That’s pretty normal – it’s tough to read 30, 100 or 300 blog posts a day and absorb everything.”

Men with Pens is going to four days a week instead of six. “We want you all to have time to read our posts and enjoy them, and we feel this decision is the best route to take. It gives us more room to continue to offer readers good lessons, strong messages and creative content.”

The MarketingProfs Daily Fix blog includes the top ten reasons why posting daily is “so Web 1.0.” Eric Kintz said many bloggers can’t keep up the pace (they like their families too much) and abandon blogs after 3 months or so. He added that the pressure to post daily can keep corporate leaders from becoming respected thought leaders because they don’t have time to post, and the duty often goes to a PR agency (or your friendly neighborhood copywriter).

Marketing guru Seth Godin talked about RSS fatigue on his post, “The noisy tragedy of the blog commons.” Godin said, “Over time, as blogs reach the mass market, the number of new readers coming in is going to go down, and the percentage of loyal readers will increase. The loyal readers are going to matter more.

“Blogs with restraint, selectivity, cogency and brevity (okay, that’s a long way of saying “making every word count”) will use attention more efficiently and ought to win.”

Thus, it sounds like I can offer this advice: posting regularly doesn’t mean every day. We bloggers can post twice a week, four times a week or whenever we have something real to say without losing our loyal readers, perhaps even increasing the number of people who value our content.

Here at Avenue Z, I’ve decided to heed my own well-researched advice. Although I’ve really never had much trouble coming up with a post a day, I’m cutting down from five posts a week (one each weekday) to three: Tuesdays, Thursdays and once over the weekend. I hope my blogging community (joyously discovered yesterday) will still find value in their visits.

I’m taking this step for two reasons. First, I think the blogging gurus are right… most of my readers don’t have time to visit daily, and I want to respect their time and keep them coming back.

The second reason is a little more selfish. After the analysis of how I spend my time, I realized I put in an hour or more (sometimes much more) messing around with my blog: writing posts, watching stats, generating traffic… all those things suck time from what I do for a living, and, more importantly, what I want to do for a living. Now that I’ve created a real daily writing habit, I can use the three free mornings per work week to write non-copywriter things such as book proposals and magazine article queries. I can spend a little more time on a marketing plan for my main business or a life plan for my future as a writer.

Although I’m cutting back on the regular posts, I reserve the right to post little random things as they pop up, like the news about the recent Southern California earthquake that shook my desk and rattled my nerves, or assaults against the English language such as the call from an academic criminologist to abandon those pesky spelling rules. And, of course, I’ll keep you abreast of cupcake emergencies.

See you all Thursday!

I just read a blog post from Search Engine People about how companies can manage negative results from appearing in search engines. This relates to the famous Google bomb incident when searching for “miserable failure” used to return the bio of George Bush. (They’ve removed that one, but if you google “french military victories“, you still get this.)

I have a couple of alerts set up for key search phrases related to Avenue Z, but I expect I’ll stay pretty benign throughout the life of my company.  But what is interesting these days when it comes to SEO and my websites is the way people find Life on Avenue Z and meeting their expectations once they get here.

I get a lot of searches for “PR versus journalism,” which leads people to The Differences Between a Copywriter and a Journalist. I also seem to be very popular for searches about Victoria’s Secret customer service. But the biggest, strangest trend here on Avenue Z started when someone called me “the sexiest woman on the planet.”

I get “sexiest” hits every day, with everything from “the sexiest PowerPoint” to “the sexiest ass on the planet” and “sexiest marketing words.” While I’m flattered beyond belief, I’m dismayed that most of the people who come here for those phrases spend less than one second here on the site. This means that my content disappoints, that they’re actually not finding the sexiest PowerPoint. They’re finding a quirky copywriter who shares too much. And that’s definitely not what they’re looking for.

PS — if you can read the tiny type in the screenshot, you’ll see that 51 people searched for the original term with quotation marks and tended to stay for several minutes. These were my friends — I sent the search phrase to everyone I knew and told them to check it out before it disappeared forever.

There’s a difference between working as a writer and running a writing business. As Avenue Z Writing Solutions grows, I’m discovering I need to dedicate more and more time to simply keeping the business going.

I now spend a couple of hours a day (at least) just … umm… doing business things: answering emails, setting appointments, maintaining my blog, etc. And that doesn’t include the time I should be spending on marketing and organization.

This may sound crazy, but I’m hiring an assistant, or at least I’m taking the steps to hire one. I placed an ad on craigslist this morning, and I just received my first reply.

I’m asking for help for 4 hours a week. This will give me a dedicated person to help with my blog and website, follow through with marketing, assist with research and bug me about doing my billing and accounting.

One of the main benefits will be the peace of mind I’ll get by being able to get some of my tasks out of my head. When I’m relaxing in the tub or running in the evening or heading off to bed, I’m ALWAYS feeling guilty about things left undone. I have great marketing ideas I want to put in motion. I need to really clean up this blog. I have to update the samples and testimonials on my website. These little things drive me crazy and make it almost impossible for me to truly relax.

Side note — Productivity Guru David Allen’s philosophy is that these little nagging thoughts are what stop you from being productive. His book rocks!

Thus, I’m hiring someone. I’m justifying it because I’m no longer hitting the coffee shop every day, and, believe it or not, I was spending almost as much per month at the coffee shop as I will be paying an assistant. Yeah. I had a problem.

Cross your fingers!

On Friday I had a call with a Senior Editor for a firm that creates websites for lawyers. On the phone, he sounded young and unhappy, impatient and tight lipped. I understand why he’s not happy to speak with me. I was hired to rewrite the content that his team wrote for my client, who is very unhappy with the content they produced. Having an outsider like me write the content was “very unusual to our standard process,” he said.

I’m not a lawyer, but I know how to write. Their original content was horrible. I tried to show Mr. Senior Editor a few examples of the inconsistencies, changes in tone, illogical sentences… and he said nothing. Perhaps he was nodding as he was texting on his iPhone. Maybe he was rolling his eyes. When he did talk, he mentioned over and over the ramifications and consequences of bringing me in and how it was going to mess up the SEO that was so important.

I had two sets of voices talking in my head about our conversation:

1. The confident voice said, “Buddy — I know enough about SEO to ensure it’s still there, and your writing is crap no matter what you’re trying to optimize.”
2. The smaller voice said, “Do I really know what I’m doing enough? Is he right?”

When we ended the call, it was my job to write a summary of our next steps to my client with a CC to Mr. Senior Editor.  I dashed off the plan and hit send.

As it was leaving my computer, I noticed my signature:

Avenue Z Writing Solutions

…copywriting solutions for organizations with something to say

bziesenis@avenuez.net

619 231 9225

The serious side: www.avenuez.net

What’s behind the curtain: www.lifeonavenuez.com

I thought of tight-lipped Mr. Senior Editor getting my email and clicking through to my blog through “What’s behind the curtain.” And then I thought of him clicking around my blog, learning about the things I do wrong, the insecurities I share, the “oh gosh” amazement I have that I’m able to live this life. I thought of his lip perhaps moving into a sneer as he had the opportunity to judge. Perhaps he caught a typo or he really hated my writing style. Perhaps he just enjoyed how ridiculous I look when I put myself out there.

Hell. I don’t even know if he clicked on the link. He may have actually enjoyed his visit here. He may think I’m a cool chick, or he may not care in the slightest. But when I clicked the link in my own signature and tried to see this blog through his eyes, I saw a very exposed, very real human being. And I again felt small.

This is the long way to get to the point of this post: Though I frequently feel very vulnerable for not putting up a brave front, I prefer being a real human being. I’m glad I don’t sit in an office and leave my smiles and winces at home. I’m not afraid to show my soft underbelly.

The other day I discovered another real human being, and I want to share him. He’s Matt Harding, and he traveled around the world dancing in dozens of cities with hundreds of strangers. Here’s his blog, where he talks about how tired he gets of people thinking he did the dancing on a green screen or how tough it was to read that someone called him “doughy.” That’s real. Here’s a post on a marketing website about Stride Gum’s sponsorship of Matt’s dancing trips and how their low-profile advertising technique kept the project even more real.

And, more importantly, here’s the video, which makes me tear up each time I watch it. I admire Matt for being real, and I strive to be as real as he is.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

I just had a quick call with a client. It was the third of three for today.

All three have been intense and very, very different — marketing and promotion plans for a Web 2.0 company; a detailed discussion of a new wireless technology (with an engineer); a  rapid-fire discussion of four different projects for a pediatrician’s website.

At the end of the third call, I started to wrap up things as usual with a list of to-do items.

I drew a complete and utter blank.

I couldn’t remember one of the items I needed to task out. Nothing.

Saturated. Completely. Nothing else would sink in.

Luckily I just discovered something called a frosting shot that cupcake bakeries are selling. I’m going to go see if I can find one.

Have a nice weekend.