3 questions you must answer before you begin blogging.
 

Whether to blog is a question that many folks have asked themselves since blogging became a mainstream form of communication. We ended our last column discussing different ways to begin the process of engaging more interactively, socially if you will, with your community of prospects, customers, partners and even employees. Blogging is one of the central elements of this type of conversation and has become an important tool for many small businesses, including the one I work for currently. At the time of writing our blog has become the most visited section of our Web site and the largest source of inbound sales leads, not to mention giving us important information about what our users want out of the product. But blogging is not for everyone and it is important that you answer these three questions before building one:

Blogging is a difficult skill to master and it can take you a long time. Do not go into it lightly. The one thing that I recommend to companies of all sizes is to outline their blogging strategy, starting with their business goals for the blog and working backward from that point. The plan needs to be built out for at least three months of blogging, and it should be tied into your other business and marketing activity. After you complete the plan, don’t look at it for a few days. Then look at it again, and you’ll know if you are ready for a blog.
 

Blogging questions:

1) Will your Audience Read the Blog?

In a previous column, we discussed different activities you can do to find out if your community is active in the social media sphere, which includes blogs. Based on that information you should have a sense of whether your audience members will actually read the blog and if they will leave comments and interact with the blog. Most blogs start out as a one-way conversation – you writing and people reading but not commenting on the blog itself. That is OK. If you know your audience likes to read blogs and online information, then blogging might be right for your business.

2) Am I Equipped to Write a Blog?

The other day I was sitting down with a friend, a great writer in my opinion, and he had just started to blog to promote his books. He could not for the life of him figure out how to write a blog; it just was not a prose that he could figure out or conquer. He quickly realized that blogging was never going to be a skill that he would be able to master – it just wasn’t his style. Blogging is not for everyone, but there is probably someone in your organization who is a great blogger. Don’t simply look at the CEO or marketing executive as a blogger. Ask around and identify the most passionate spokesperson you have – you might have found your blogger.

3) Do I have the Patience to Blog?

Imagine you launch your blog tomorrow, completely prepared for what is before you and ready to put the work in that it takes to make this happen. For the next week you put up great posts and check your stats each and every day...but there is no movement. Readers stagnate, nobody leaves comments, and you start to question why you even started the blog in the first place. Stay calm. Blogging can take months to truly become a success. You need to ask whether you have the patience to put in all that work for a long period of time perhaps with no discernible impact.
 

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