Do you Post Unfinished Articles and Should You?
Thought provoking idea but, Does anyone publish articles on their website without actually finishing the article?
In example: Not adding pictures yet, not fixing grammar errors, or maybe adding only 3/4 of a complete article?
I have a few thoughts on this and would love your input.
Personally I have always completed my article in it's entirety before publishing.
However, I've started posting the article before adding any pictures and only doing a quick proofread(I still add the tags and do the seo side of things). Though I'm even considering posting incomplete articles too to see how this goes.
My thought on this is I've read somewhere about the possibility of actually getting more engagement on your content because people will notice you have missing information and feel the need to add their input.
This also adds more of a community feeling because the people engaging are actually helping you build out the content of your website. Not just with the comments but with thoughts, tips, and advice on the topic.
In turn, you can of course use this engagement to complete the article and your audience will see that you are listening by adding their input into the actual articles.
I'm not saying leaving the articles unfinished for months, but your publishing speed would increase and you have the possibility of engagement from others even on an unfinished article.
It can takes months or longer for your article to rank well in Google, and going back and updating older articles is something you are suppose to be doing anyways which helps the freshness of your website.
One person you might've heard of is Jeff Lenney. He wrote a controversial article about WA and eventually removed it if I remember correctly. However, he does know SEO very well and ranks highly in the search engines for different keywords and I noticed he will post incomplete reviews of products with a side note at the bottom saying "review is still in progress" or something along those lines, which is where I actually thought of this idea awhile ago.
What are your thoughts on this, Have you ever considered it, and do you believe this could actually be a pretty great idea?
Recent Comments
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It might work on some niches and on some other niches won't work.
You need to know your audience first, will they quit reading you if you do this, or will they love the work you do when they comment you still need to work on the post.
I came across an article via site comments that appeared unfinished. It just ended without properly finishing, no pictures or anything.
I didn't bother to comment or go back.
For me it seemed that they couldn't be bothered to make the effort to finish it properly, therefore I would not make the effort either. I certainly wouldn't return to that website.
Others of course, may feel very differently. It may just be a getting older thing with me.
I think this is something I have always done, mostly unintentionally! In a month or so, I have usually read and studied, and the first published content is now incomplete because I have grown!
I do think it is a good idea to add the note that you are still researching the idea, product or action, whichever is relevant. I have not done that but may in the future.
I find that updating and editing old material helps in rankings.
Thanks for the food for thought,
Sami