When starting a new blog, it's important to understand what type of content you will be creating with respect to your traffic goals. The purpose of this post is to explore the two major types of blogging content, news content vs. timeless content.
What is News Content?
News content outlines current events and their implications. For example, if you were to write about the release of Google Buzz and the problems that were associated with its user privacy, this type of content would be classified as news because it's time dependent.
What is Timeless Content?
Timeless content is sometimes referred to as "Q&A content". In other words, this type of content is usually the answer to a question. For example, if you write about how to use AJAX for an RIA web application, or if you write about how to start a new restaurant, these types of articles are classified as this type of content because they are answers to questions that are time independent .
News content vs. Timeless Content
The main difference between news content and timeless content is traffic distribution. If you write news related blog posts, you will see huge spikes in traffic when the article is released, and then you will see a steep decline in traffic a few days or so after the release. After a week or so, the traffic for that particular blog post will approach zero. Timeless content, on the other hand, usually experiences a small amount of traffic when it's first released, but steadily grows with time. Since this type of content is useful for years to come, people will naturally find and link to your articles, resulting in steady growth.
Which type of content is best?
Depending on your goals, you will want to create news related content if you're needing a traffic boost, and you'll need to create timeless content to increase your future traffic, acting like an investment. In my experience, blogs that focus on timeless content tend to be more successful in the long run because it's easier to maintain your traffic.
For example, if you have a news blog, and you publish three to five articles everyday for a year, generating a ton of traffic, and then you quit blogging for a month, your traffic will plummet. If on the other hand, you have a timeless content blog, and you publish three to five articles everyday for a year, also generating a lot of traffic, and you again quit blogging for a month, your traffic will continue to steadily grow (just at a slower rate than if you had kept up your blogging).
When WebKrunk was first launched a few months ago, my strategy was to begin with news related content to give myself a traffic boost. Once WebKrunk had its foot in the door, I began writing more timeless content articles (like this one) to start building future traffic. To date, I have dozens of articles that consistently provide growing traffic each and every day, resulting in an overall exponential growth.
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