Don't Kill Your Blog

I heard recently of an organization that created a blog for a large event they were having. The blog drew a significant audience quickly in the weeks leading up to the event and also saw a surge of traffic and comments in the days following the event. It was a successful blog in almost every way possible, but three weeks later the blog was dead (meaning taken offline and totally inaccessible.) Why? Apparently since the event was over the organization decided it wasn't worth keeping around.

Never mind the fact that the organization just created a valuable asset to communicate about future events (not to mention this was a quick and cheap way to do it.) Never mind they created a great platform for conversations and feedback about the event which didn't exist previously (and now doesn't again.) Never mind they had a huge opportunity to engage the readers with other product offers that they would almost certainly be interested in. The fact is, when they killed the blog they killed multiple opportunities with a highly focused and interested niche of their customers who were prepared to give them their undivided attention. They killed a feedback opportunity, a sales opportunity, and a promotion opportunity.

The bottom line is this: don't kill your blog. It's too easy to maintain even if only at a minimal level and almost always too valuable to kill.