Why You Aren’t Blogging (and What to Do About That)
The most valuable thing to a business owner is not necessarily money. No, the most valuable thing to many owners, operators, and leaders is time. Your business can always find ways to add revenue and increase sales. But you can’t get back the time that passes each and every day. What will you do with those hours? How many hours have you wasted? Where could your precious, finite time have been better spent? And can the answers help you find your own reason to blog?
The cold hard truth is that posting on a company or personal blog takes time. Sometimes it takes LOTS of time. Doing it poorly and inconsistently takes time. Doing it regularly and well takes even more time. And since we all know that time is a very valuable resource and there is never enough of it, the tasks that take the most time out of our days tend to be set aside or deprioritized in favor of things that have more immediate results and demonstrable value.
But suggesting that business leaders and their companies do not regularly post to their blogs solely because of limited time misses the bigger picture. There are lots of reasons that you aren’t blogging. And each of those reasons, while valid, is not a good excuse for not being the one that tells your story.
In this post, we will examine the most common reasons that companies like yours are not regularly updating their blogs. We will also offer some useful tips for battling blog apathy and ambivalence to turn your blog into a competitive advantage regardless of the industry you serve.
Four reasons you aren’t blogging
You Don’t Have Time
By far the number one reason we hear for why people aren’t blogging. They simply don’t have time. It is not just other priorities at work but also priorities in their personal lives that keep them from allocating the time necessary to blog consistently. A well-crafted blog post might take anywhere between two and five hours to put together. That assumes a best-case where you are focused, organized, and have your research together.
Finding the time to blog is not about canceling some other important activity. It is, however, about recognizing the value of your company blog. With that recognition, you can start to understand the value of a single blog post. If, for example, a single blog post can land you a $5,000 LTV client or customer, it starts to look a lot more appealing to find the time to blog.
Make it a reason to blog: You will not find more hours in a day. Finding time to blog comes from seeing the benefit of blog posts for your business instead of seeing blog posts as a waste of time.
Blogging doesn’t hold your Interest
Many business owners and operators simply do not find blogging to be interesting. Sure, the first few posts that are written might be exciting. They practically write themselves! Pretty quickly, however, blog posts become more nuanced, requiring more research and planning. We see lots of blogs that have five or ten posts and then…nothing.
Aside from the inherent value found in content helping you acquire new customers, blogs also give you the chance to connect with people interested in the work that you do. Most people will talk at length about their job, their company, and their work if asked about it at a cocktail party or work conference. Blogging is very similar, just in a different medium.
Make it a reason to blog: Think of blogging as your chance to share the wealth of knowledge with people who do not know as much. Frame your experience blogging as sharing your experience with others, as if you get to be a mentor to anyone on the internet that visits your blog.
The ROI just “isn’t there”
A well-executed and regularly updated blog may be the single best marketing investment you can make. Full stop. A blog helps increase organic traffic via search. It improves your reputation in your business sector. Your blog gives people a reason to talk about your business and share your expertise filling in the gaps of what makes you special so prospects have a more complete picture. Your comapny blog keeps your mission and vision clear not just for readers, but also for your employees. On and on. The business benefits of a blog are extensive.
Most companies know these things, but they do not know exactly how much actual return on investment they get out of the blog. Calculating the ROI is critical to getting your blog on track. We’ve worked with companies that have libraries of posts, whitepapers, and ebooks and still struggle with attribution and thus ROI calculation. It can be hard, bordering on impossible. But calculating your return on investment, even in the big picture, is critical to seeing your blog as a profit center and not a wasted investment.
Make it a reason to blog: Encourage your sales team to share relevant or interesting posts with prospects and potential customers. Blog posts can make for great sales collateral and the immediate ROI can be a little easier to gauge.
You aren’t sure what to say
A lack of blog posts might indicate a lack of time or interest in blogging. Or it might indicate that the company simply does not know what to write. This is a common and totally understandable situation. If this is the case for you or your company, then it is important to take a few steps back and level-set exactly what the blog is for.
Your blog is not for product release notes or store hours or announcements about the new product you are selling. Your blog also is not for talking about how great your company is, how great you are to work for, or for interviewing your own CEO. Put those things on the main website if you feel the need to publish those things at all.
Your blog is about connecting with your audience, your intended customer or partner, by writing about things that are interesting to them. Not you. They are interested in industry trends. Readers are interested in comparisons of different tools or solutions available. They are interested in entertaining or historical stories about the industry. Visitors are interested in being smarter when they finish than when they started.
Long ago we authored posts for an industrial paint company. The most popular post we ever wrote? 800 words about how you actually paint the Golden Gate bridge. If you are a web development company, a well-written post about the REST API is going to impress…..your competitors. Conversely, a well-written post about how improving site speed will increase eCommerce conversions is going to impress potential clients.
Make it a reason to blog: Think of creating a story for everything that makes your industry – not your business – interesting. Practically every sector comes with a rich history; make it your blog’s mission to share.
Finding Your Reason to Blog
With unlimited time, a clear idea of what to write about, and an understanding of how much revenue the blog is going to drive, you would no doubt find a way to produce great posts on a regular basis. Revenue-generating activities do tend to get lots of attention at businesses of all sizes.
We recognize that checking all those boxes can be a challenge for legitimate reasons. Old habits die hard and if you (or your team) are not in the habit of posting to the blog already, it might be hard to get started.
If you would like to understand how a blog can help your business grow, contact us for a conversation. It is prudent that you understand the potential value long before you start writing. We would be happy to help put together a roadmap for your blogging future, free of charge. Why? Because we love blogs that much, and we want you to start telling your story!