Blogging evangelists will tell you that every business-large, small or solo- should have a blog. I disagree.
Sure, blogging is a great way to increase visibility, build your brand and interact with customers and clients. It’s a gatekeeper-free platform for putting your message out into the world. And there are many examples of blogs that have completely changed the way companies communicate with their customers and clients. (Check out this Washington Post article for a few.)
But a blog isn’t an automatic add into your marketing toolkit. In fact, for many companies, starting a blog is simply a bad idea.
Here’s when not to start a company blog:
When you have nothing to say. It sounds silly, but think about this for a minute. Do you know what your blog is about? Can you give it a tagline that sums that up? Do you know who is going to write it? What is the point of view? How will your brand messages be communicated? Who would be interested in reading that and are they really your target market? What exactly will you be writing? Is there an editorial calendar? Ask questions first, blog later.
When you want to sell, sell, sell. Do your eyes (or those of your sales folks) light up at the opportunity to send a constant stream of sales messages into cyberspace via your blog? Being the gatekeeper doesn’t give you license to bombard your audience with sales messages for your products and services. In the right context, blogs can be great sales tools. But information is the key here. If the content you’re providing isn’t interesting, no one is going to read it. And I don’t know anyone who searches Google in hopes of finding daily sales messages.
When you know you’ll never maintain it. I’ve seen this happen a number of times: a company leader gets it into his or her head that a company blog is a fantastic idea. Not just a company blog, but one he or she will write personally. All goes well for a few weeks. But no one’s commenting. The blogger loses interest. If this sounds like you, stop. If it’s your boss, head them off at the pass. Before launching any blog in the name of your brand, be sure you have a firm commitment and schedule for posting on a regular basis, or hire someone to do that. Understand that it might take time to build readership and commit to the process.
When you need to control the conversation. You know who you are. If your business operates rigidly from the top down and every single line of copy you write must be run through legal counsel at least twice, then blogging is not for you. Blogging is all about interaction. You can’t necessarily control where your content goes after you post it, or whether people will comment on that content elsewhere in a way that you’d rather they didn’t. So if a need for control is deeply ingrained in the business culture, save yourself a lot of time and headache. Pick something else.
Don’t get me wrong. Done right, a blog can be an effective marketing tool. But as with anything else in your marketing communications toolkit, having a solid game plan makes all the difference.
Sally Anne Giedrys is the founder of artisan communications, an independent copywriting and communications consultancy that works with businesses and nonprofit organizations to craft compelling marketing and PR messages. For more than 15 years, Sally has been making businesses “sound good” in print and online through a potent combination of great writing, savvy strategy and high integrity communications. Learn more about artisan’s services at www.artisancopy.com. Or reach Sally directly at sally@artisancopy.com.
