If you are planning to start a business blog, ask yourself these questions before you take the final plunge.
1. Do you really need a blog?
Writing and maintaining a blog takes of commitment, as well as a passion for stringing words into a decent sentence. If you don't enjoy writing that much, you could always create an audio or video blog.
2. Whom do you want to reach with your blog?
The first step to reaching your audience is understanding where they go to find information about your products.
If your target audience belongs to one or more of these segments, a blog might be just the thing to boost your business.
- Internet users
Does your target audience really use the internet? If not, then starting a blog will just be a huge waste of time and effort.
- Blog readers
Does your target audience read blogs? Or do they prefer to get their information in their inbox? If the latter is true, then an email newsletter might be a better option than a blog.
- Search engine users
If you know that your audience uses search engines to find information, a blog will increase your chances of getting their attention.
3. What do you want to achieve with your blog?
There are a lot of things that a blog can do for your business. Blogs can help you -
- Increase your visibility and search engine rankings
- Brand yourself, your products, your services, your company
- Build a community and network with people who have similar interests
- Expand your reach to those outside your current sphere of influence
- Establish your credibility as an expert or thought-leader in your field
- Put a human face on your business
- Reach out to potential customers and stakeholders
Deciding exactly what you want to achieve with your blog can help you get focused, so that you can spend your time and effort in activities that help, not hinder your business objectives.
4. How much time can you spend on your blog?
Serious business bloggers not only spend time writing their own blogs, but also spend a great deal of time reading up on current events and browsing other blogs in their field for information.
If you are prepared to put in the time and effort required to do that sort of research, your blog will serve as a good branding tool for your business.
5. What blogging platform will serve your needs best?
Deciding your blogging platform is an important step that you should take only after becoming familiar with the features and benefits of each option.
The reason it is so crucial is because it can be extremely difficult to migrate an established blog to a new platform once you have started it. Moving your blog can result in you losing your data, search engine listings and readers, so don't take this decision lightly.
Decide which platform will best meet your marketing objectives, time constraints and personal preferences before you make your first post.
6. How do you plan to promote your blog?
Why is it good to know this before you start your blog? Because it will help you decide where best to invest your time and effort when you need to build traffic to your blog.
You'll learn more about the methods to promote your blog when you subscribe to the email course below. Some of these tasks can be outsourced, while others you would have to do yourself.
7. How will you assess the success of your blog?
To determine how successful your blog is in boosting your profile or profits you will have to measure your blog traffic and track sales or leads that have come through it.
Understand that blogging is not for everyone. It's just another form of communication.
Don't get so hung up on the technology that you end up ignoring more appropriate ways of communicating your message.
Some things may be easier to communicate face to face, in a conference room, or even through the good old telephone.
But if you asked yourself all the questions above and decided that blogging meets all your objectives, then a blog may be just what the doctor ordered for your business.