Shimon Sandler wrote an interesting article on CEO Bloggers and whether or not they should clear their posts throught their legal department that got me thinking about my current situation with company blogs. I love to push the idea of a blog to my clients, but with a strong air of caution. I’m also in a constant uphill battle with an agency I work for to either take their blog seriously, or remove it all together. I thought this would be a great time to go over some of the reasons not to start a blog. I hope that this will also educate you on the amount of work it takes to carry a successful blog and, more importanly, help you to make the decision TO start a blog (but do so correctly).
The following mistakes or reasons do not make your company a bad one by any means. It just means that you may not be ready for a blog right now, or some re-evaluation is in order.
1. You don’t have the resources
This is a common excuse for companies that don’t want to do something. Be it hiring someone or improving or changing a process, people in a position of authority often use this as a reason not to do something. But in the end, it’s just that. An excuse. The truth is, you probably do have the resources, you just don’t consider the value of having a blog as enough to justify the cost. If this is your mindset, then you simply aren’t ready to have a blog.
2. You don’t have the time
Having and maintaing a blog does indeed take time. It’s an investment. You have to write something often enough to keep your audience coming/growing. If you don’t think you can invest the time, or delegate the time appropriately, then you may want to hold off on starting a blog.
3. You will be using the blog as a sales/marketing tool
Probably the worst offense in company blogging. Blogs are indeed a great way to draw traffic and and grow your audience. This will indeed help the traffic to your main site. This should NOT be the main focus of your blog. The general web surfer is much more savvy than they were 5 years ago. They want to get information on their terms, not have it sold to them. A blog is meant to be a means of communication to your past, current and future customers/clients. This should be the “human” side that the common person sees, and not another way for you to sell your product or services. By making this mistake, you will not only lose any readers you may have and turn away new visitors, you also run the risk of leaving a bad taste in the mouths that in turn feed you. If this is the purpose of your blog, find another means.
4. You will be of the mindset of “set it and forget it”
If your blog is good enough, people will continually read it. The more this happens, the higher the chance people will comment on it. It’s important to answer all the comments that you can. By posting and ignoring any comments on your blog, you will make people feel removed and not involved.
5. You won’t take the blog seriously
It’s important to realize that your company’s blog will tell a lot about your company as a whole. Now, it’s not the most important thing to have your own domain as opposed to a Blogger site or WordPress hosted account, but it speaks a lot to me personally. The way I see it, if the blog isn’t important enough to take the time to have it on your domain (a very easy task) then you likely will not take future issues with the blog seriously. This is not to paint a broad brush as there are plenty of great hosted blogs out there, but if it make me feel this way, how many others feel this way?
So there you go. 5 good reasons not to start a blog, and hopefully 5 more reasons that you will start one. Though these aren’t all the mistakes made by new bloggers, these are the bigger and most common ones. If you can steer clear of these, you should be fine. What are you waiting for? Get to blogging.
With this, and any other post, please read the disclaimer.