I’m a believer in Jim Collins and his concept of Fire Bullets, Then Cannonballs.
The idea is that we’re all really guessing when we’re making decisions. It definitely applies to many areas in life including the business world. Even the best and most experienced businesspeople aren’t 100% sure what will and what won’t work.
So the danger in going all in on a decision is that you can lose a great deal and even to the point of having to shutter the business. But if you continually fire bullets or take smaller risks to test things out you can see what works and then fire a big cannonball.
Now, that doesn’t mean that you don’t consider some strategy with your bullets. You try to calibrate a little. You give some thought to it. You look to see a minimum amount you can invest so that you get enough data to make a decision down the road.
Firing A Business Blogging Bullet
Blogging can be a large investment. The folks I encounter that have tried blogging almost always comment that it’s much more work than they anticipate. And that is especially true after the initial luster wears off and you have to just continue doing the harder work.
That can lead to a feeling that you need to go all in on business blogging in order to make it work. But I don’t know that taking that approach is best either. You might be going all in on a blogging strategy that isn’t the right one for you and your situation. You might be going all in with a writer that isn’t quite the right fit.
So it can make sense to try a few different blogging bullets before you go all in.
Here are a few thoughts on the minimum you can do to test a blogging effort…
Minimum Number of Posts
For several years I wrote a blog about country music songs. Then, about 5 or so years ago, I started listening to podcasts that hosted songwriters. and many of them said it was about 5-10 years before they got any traction with their songwriting. One of them said they looked back and realized that they had to write about 1,000 songs before they started getting traction.
And that traction meant they might get a song recorded, not necessarily released as a single.
You can think of blogging in a similar way. I like to tell folks that you’re looking at about 50-100 posts before you start seeing some return on your investment.
Now, that is if you’re starting from scratch. Meaning you’re a new business.
If you have an established brand that’s been around for awhile and already has a following then you’re going to get some data sooner.
Quantity is important in creating content. You need to reach a certain number in order to learn how to create and what the audience is looking for.
Minimum Time Commitment
Let’s say you’re looking at those 50 posts.
Schedule yourself to do one each week for a year. That will get you there. So you’re really looking at a year minimum in order to test out your blogging.
Again, that might be sooner if you’re an established brand. But it’s going to take some time.
Look at just about every one of your favorite blogs. Chances are really good that they have been around for several years.
If it takes a songwriter 5 years to gain any traction it’s going to take a business blog a year or two to do the same.
Types of Posts
I like to start with the basic strategy that you want to identify questions your target audience is asking and provide the best answers with blog posts. Try to brainstorm 50 questions that you get from customers or that you see your customers asking online in forums, social media or forums.
That will give you a great start.
And you can also mix in other types of posts as well. You can tell stories, share information about your company and even doing interviews and other things.
Sharing, Promotion & Guesting
For the first year try to share the blog content on social media. Today, social channels want to keep their users on their platforms. So take the full post or snippets from the post and add them right to your social profile. This will help to attract people to your brand and that will lead to some indirect traffic to your website.
Final Thoughts
This is kind of a minimum effort for each of these aspects of blogging.
You’re looking at about 50 posts, one year and a little bit of social sharing along with two or three different types of blog posts.
That will give you enough data to determine if you want to move forward and how you want to move forward. You can certainly do more in each or all of the categories. But then you’ll have more to lose. If you’re okay with that you can certainly see some faster results and even some better results.