Is business blogging relevant to every industry, or just plain unnecessary in some sectors?
How do you know if it’s right for your business?
Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of blogging, across industries and subject matters.
The Pros of Business Blogging
Business blogging offers a lot of benefits. By simply posting to a blog, brands can increase online traffic, connect with their customer base, and more.
Here are some of the benefits that come from regular blogging:
- Search Engine Optimisation: Search engines look for relevant content—and by regularly blogging, topic specific content, you are able to establish higher authority in search rankings, and this leads to higher numbers of search traffic for your site.
- Lead Generation: When you add persuasive calls to action to your blog posts, you turn your blog into a powerful lead generator. Your calls to action might be the offer of a free e-book, a request to sign up for your newsletter, or the suggestion that they call you to learn more about your services. In every case, by telling your readers what you’d like them to do, you set yourself up to see results.
- Brand Reinforcement: Blogs give brands an opportunity to reinforce their brand image. Incorporate your brand’s style and mission statement into every aspect of your blog—the design, the type of content, the colours, the logo, etc. By doing this, you reaffirm to followers that you are the brand they think you are—and this builds trust.
- Connection with Customers & Prospects: When prospective customers go looking for more information about you and what you offer, they often discover your blog. Sometimes customers who wouldn’t send you an email will comment on a blog post. What’s more, blogs give you a great forum for addressing common customer questions or responding to concerns you’ve heard. Bottom line: blogs provide an approachable format for you and your followers to connect.
- Attaching A Human Face To Your Company: A blog allows you to tell a more personal story for your brand—you can write editorial, opinion-type pieces. You can share behind-the-scenes stories and photos. You get to round out the image that followers have of your brand.
The Cons of Business Blogging
There’s also reasons to be hesitant about blogging: blogging takes work.
Blogs don’t write themselves, and keeping up with one takes time, effort, and consistency. In fact, here’s a closer look at some of the biggest costs associated with blogging:
- Initiative: For a company satisfied with things as they are and have been, jumping into the blogging world sounds tough—because it’s going to take initiative. A business must step outside their comfort zone, forgo tradition, and try something new, maybe difficult for some. And for brands satisfied with their current status and sales results, this might seem unnecessary.
- Time: There’s no way around it—blogging takes time. Whether you’re a small business owner blogging solo or a CEO hiring a marketing firm to blog about your enterprise, in either case, a blog takes an investment. That’s why some businesses decide the cost is too great. They don’t want to dedicate time or resources every week to write.
- Creative Energy: Most writers say the hardest part of blogging is coming up with topics—and it’s true. Regularly generating new ideas takes creative energy that some businesses would rather invest elsewhere—so if you can’t come up with blog content, blogging might not be for you.
- Discipline: Unlike a lot of business projects, blogging is ongoing. Keeping up with a blog requires regular discipline. You have to keep coming back, week after week or day after day, producing new articles. If disciplining yourself or your team to manage a blog seems daunting, you might decide to skip it.
Principles to Help You Decide if a Business Blog is right for your business.
So after analysing the pros and cons associated with blogging, what next? How do you decide if blogging it is for you? To help you, here are some general principles about blogging to consider, no matter what your industry:
- Don’t Let Fear Intimidate You. If it is intimidation that’s holding you back from blogging, Don’t. Research more about blogging to make it less daunting?
- Short Posts Are Okay. Moreover, coming up with topics doesn’t have to be a pain. Create an editorial calendar to schedule your posts. Take a chunk of time each month or quarter to plan out posts and then just proceed according to plan. By setting aside time to brainstorm, you save yourself the regular headache of not knowing what to write.
- Write with your Clients in mind. One of the biggest deciding factors for companies wondering if they should blog is audience. Think about your target demographic—would a blog about your industry be useful to them? Would they want to read it? Would it add value to their lives? If the answers are yes to these questions, you have good reason to move forward.
- Be Open Minded. Blogging is not your only opportunity to generate leads or connect with clients. You could use social media to respond to prospects’ questions. You could use newsletters to churn out helpful tips. So before you jump into blogging, look at your goals and see if they align best with what blogging achieves, or if your time would be best spent elsewhere.
In short, a strategic blogging strategy is beneficial to most business.