This may come off as strange.
This is Ghost Blog Writers and we want your business. We want to help you succeed with your business blog. However, an article that recently came out from the Better Business Bureau puts out the wrong message about business blogging.
The article – Business Blogging – Why Every Business Owner Should Do It – came out earlier this month. The BBB is a good organization and I’m probably taking it a little too literal, but I don’t think business blogging is for every business.
The article gives great reasons for starting a business blog. I would just like to expand on the article with a few thoughts about how your business should prioritize blogging to ensure the best chance for success.
After all, it’s not beneficial to set yourself up for failure.
Business Blogging – Why It’s Not for Every Business
Let’s start with the good quotes from the article:
A blog dedicated to the thoughts of a business’ president or CEO or a business’ mission can serve as a meaningful way to attract potential customers.
This is great. It’s exactly one of the best reasons to start a business blog.
According to a recent survey by HubSpot, 57% of companies using blogs reported that they acquired customers from leads generated directly from their blog.
Yep. Another good reason for businesses to explore blogging. All marketing is about acquiring new customers and if blogging is proving to be a way to do that it should be on the consideration list for all businesses.
With (almost) no length limits, a blog is a great platform to share exactly what it is that makes your business different from the rest.
This is probably my favorite part of the article. I love how blogs have been able to give business leaders a platform. Through blogs, business owners have been able to distinguish themselves from the competition. Differentiating from the competitive can make your business more profitable and appealing to new customers.
So what’s not to like?
As I said earlier, the BBB probably doesn’t mean that every business should blog, but it comes off that way in the title so I thought I’d clarify for them. Blogging is not for every business.
There are great reasons for businesses to explore blogging. However, depending on your business model it might not be worth putting the effort into. There are lots of marketing channels available for your business to grow and blogging might not be the best option.
That being said, blogging is something every business should look into.
Over the last few years I’ve seen a few common things happen in the business blogging world. The most common situation is for a business to put together some good thoughts on blogging. They designate someone in their business to run the blog. Posts are published and after a few months the company loses interest, the person writing the blog becomes discouraged both by the amount of effort it takes to research, write, and format for a post and the lack of encouragement from the business leaders.
Post frequency tapers off and soon the blog becomes dormant.
It’s not the end of the world, but it’s usually the end of the road for blogging for the business. They move on to other marketing initiatives and determine blogging isn’t for them. It’s a failed test. No interest was generated and time was lost.
You don’t want this to happen to your business.
Here are a few items to put on a checklist as you prioritize blogging in your business model:
- Audience Research – Does your target audience (get specific) read blogs?
- Goals – What are the goals of your blog? Define what a conversion is for your business. Is it a direct sale of a product? Is it a sign-up for an email program? Is it getting more coverage on industry websites and publications to increase the overall branding of your company? Determine your goals and it will help determine if a blog is the right way to achieve your goals.
- Company Research and Expectations – Do some internal discovery. Figure out if there are people in your business that can become writers and editors of a blog. If there are also make sure the leaders in your business are in support of blogging for at least a good two years. Write out a plan and give full support to the efforts. It’s difficult work and results usually don’t start appearing for 6 months to a year. This is a crucial period for a blog and where most give up.
So business blogging isn’t for every business.
Do some analysis of your audience and your business. Determine if the opportunity is there for you to take advantage of blogging. If it is – that’s great!
But be careful about setting expectations too high and setting yourself up for failure. Ghost Blog Writers would love to tell every business that blogging is the way to go, but that’s not the case.
It’s the goal of Ghost Blog Writers to have successful relationships, not to create blogs for the sake of creating blogs.