Project Bloodhound: Writing for the archives: “See that fella over there? He’s 20 years old. In 10 years, he’s got a chance to be a star. Now that fella over there, he’s 20 years old, too. In 10 years he’s got a chance to be 30.”

by Teri Lussier

Rust Belt Realtor

Author website

Here today; gone tomorrow? I have no clue what happened to the original post and the once dead link, but it did make me think about the importance of a blog archive.

One of the first things I noticed about BloodhoundBlog was the tremendous amount of useful information in the archives. It’s very possible that back then I spent more time poking through old stuff then keeping up with the first page, and still today, if I need to jump start my brain with an idea about marketing or I’m looking for an example of how to tackle a complex real estate issue, BHB is the first place I look because of it’s extensive archive.

TheBrickRanch archive is always in the back of my mind when I write for my blog. I want to build a complete real estate-pedia for the Dayton area on TBR, so I try to make the work there vital and useful enough to provide content for the future. I sit down and write with one person in mind, but I want to write for the person I don’t know; the person who will find this a year from now, or two or three years from now. Is the information timeless? I understand that not everything we write can be pertinent to the future, and sometimes I just want to have fun, but when someone uses the search box, please, I hope there is some there, there.

Blogs are an ever evolving medium- organic, fluctuating, there’s an ebb and flow to blogging that lends itself to change. I’ve changed a few things on TBR lately, and some of the posts I wrote last year needed to be updated accordingly. As I’ve grown, both as a blogger, and as a real estate agent, I’ve gone back into my archives and changed posts to make them stronger, added pingbacks from one post to another to make each post more relevant and provide more information. It’s general blog maintenance that encourages a more dynamic and beneficial use of the blog.

I want my posts to converse and link with each other, just like a conversation. When we talk with someone we’ve known for years, we reference old conversations- “remember when we talked about…?” That’s a natural flow to talking that works great in a blog. If I’ve written something one day, and later I can expand on it, a link goes up to the earlier post, I’ve got a pingback, and the thought process circles and grows, like this: I don’t like images in my posts, and it occurred to me while writing this that words can last much longer than stock images which tend toward the trendy- very similar, in my mind, to a fashion magazine. Why visually date my work before the reader even has a chance to plunge into the writing, which hopefully is still relevant? A compromise just came to mind- use the images for the first page, current content, and pitch them for the older material. I might could get myself on board with that one.

What if I’ve changed my mind about something? The natural flow of conversation would not be to delete that previous post. but to embrace the dynamic process that lead me to the change, and discuss it upfront: Here’s the reason I once thought that way but now think this, with links to sites that proved me wrong, and pingbacks to the previous posts, showing a logical progression of thought. Deleting posts creates frustration for your readers and leaves unanswered questions hanging in the air.

“See that fella over there? He’s 20 years old. In 10 years, he’s got a chance to be a star. Now that fella over there, he’s 20 years old, too. In 10 years he’s got a chance to be 30.” (Courtesy of Casey Stengal, I have made my first baseball analogy. Does that make me an honorary Bloodhound guy?) Blogging has benefits that dead tree publishing does not. Your marketing mailers are throw aways, the blog post should be a keeper. By writing with one eye on your archives using deep linking and the wiki-way you can make sure your content’s got a chance to be a star.