Blogging can be one of the most powerful tools you can use to attract people to your website and business. If you add just two entries a week, which shouldn’t be hard to do, you will have over 100 more pages of information about you and your business online in just one year. Many business websites are only 3-5 pages; you can have over 20 times more opportunities to be found in a relatively short period. That said, online marketing through content creation can be a challenge for many.
Here are some reasons to give up your blog:
- You are unable to add at least two posts a month to it. A “dead blog” makes your whole business look dead, so removing your unused blog from your website will make your business look more alive.
- You find that you are writing “off-topic.” The topic, of course, is anything directly related to your business—product, services, etc.—or things directly related to your industry. If you’re a retail shop, and you find yourself ranting about politics, it’s time to disassociate your business and your personal life.
- Your blogs are poorly written or edited. Let’s face it: writing is not a natural skill for many people. Reading, however, is. So, if your blogs do not make your business look good, stop.
- You have almost no understanding of search engine optimization, and you don’t want to learn the basics of keywords and content creation. A big reason to have a blog is to use it to attract new customers through search. If you don’t have a clue how to write optimized text, you’re probably doing it wrong. If you enjoy writing, spend a few hours learning about search engine optimization. If you don’t enjoy writing, and you don’t know what you’re doing (and don’t want to learn), it probably makes sense to spend your time doing other things to grow your business.
- You’ve run out of ideas. This should almost never be the case, as your business is always changing. If you’re stuck, check out some other blogs for like businesses. But, if you’ve reached a total impasse, and you can’t imagine writing anything more, it might be time to stop blogging. If you have a lot of content already online, don’t remove your blog, as that still brings value to your business.
At Kona Impact, we go through a series of questions with every web design client regarding blogs. The worst thing is for a client to pay for a blog and never use it. It makes the business look bad, and it wastes money. Even though it means less revenue to Kona Impact, we often advise business owners not to have a blog. We do make sure he or she knows about the business value of a blog, but, in the end, we don’t recommend things with a direct value to the client.
Should you blog? 100% yes! But, if you can’t, or you haven’t, it’s time to reassess your priorities and focus on other ways to grow your business.