Is Your Business Ready to Start a Blog?

I was scanning some content over at Problogger when I came across this post: Are You Ready to Start a Blog? 

This post got me thinking about the thought process that a business should go through before starting a blog. There are certainly just as many abandoned, poorly done business blogs out there as there are personal blogs.

Of course, blogging for a business is less optional. The businesses that do let their blogs falter are leaving an awful lot of money on the table. But much of the thought process has to be the same.

Does your business have the resources to devote to this blog?

Your resources are time or money. Internet marketing is not free. People only think that it's free.

Who will be responsible for writing the blog? The business owner? An in-house employee? A freelance writer?

How much money are you willing to devote to the blog? You need to know.

Don't forget, you need to devote time or money to efforts to promote your blog, too. That means several hours of guest posting, blog commenting, and social media efforts that also will not produce anything like immediate results.

Are you willing to be patient about the results?

In this, business blogs and personal blogs are exactly alike. It takes time to see real results.

After 6 months of consistent, twice weekly posts you could see traffic numbers between 2500 and 5000 monthly, give or take. And some of those people will surely convert into sales.

But that's an awful lot of months where not much is happening.

If you're going to drop your blog in a fit of impatience because it's not "selling things" by the third month then you might as well leave it off your website entirely and promote yourself in other ways. Especially since a blog is not a direct selling method, but a trust-building tool and a relationship-building tool that demonstrates your passion and competence.

Who are you talking to?

Who is your customer? What do they care about? And how can you solve their problems with your words?

This is a lot like evaluating any product, except this time you're giving the product away for free. If you're in business you probably at least have some idea of who your customers are, so you just have to decide what they might need to know.

Sometimes this is going to feel a lot like giving away the farm. What would a car repair shop blog about? Ways to tell if your car needs to go to the shop, sure, but also probably how to change a spark plug. You might be afraid that if you publish the latter you'll lose a bunch of customers who suddenly want to change their own spark plugs.

Hey, Google is a thing. I could YouTube a way to fix my own spark plugs right now, with or without you. So you won't lose anyone that you weren't already going to lose. The DIY types will always DIY. Most people will toy with the notion, recognize that you understand what you're doing, and conclude that they have neither the time nor the implication to change their spark plugs. A few of those people will come to you, cause they trust you now.

Even so your post has solved a problem for them, even if it's not the problem they think they have. They might think their problem is they don't know how to change a spark plug. In reality, the problem might simply be that they're not sure what the cheapest and most efficient way to handle their car's spark plug problem might be.

And as long as you keep putting out posts that solve problems (preferably posts with good keywords in the title whenever possible) you'll put together some stuff that's worth reading. If you stick with it, you'll eventually reap some awesome benefits from the exercise.

As long as you wait until you're ready to begin.