Setting goals for business blogging
02/04/11 | Kentucky Business Network
Businesses blog for many reasons. Whether your purpose is for marketing and lead generation or to build trust, the practice of blogging can create real results for a business of any size–from small to large.
For small businesses, blogging can be a great way to build visibility. As you write great content, other authors and readers may begin to follow your blog and respond to your posts. This can be an excellent way to find new clients or attract talent. Your blog articles can be a great way to elegantly and indirectly advertise your business through social platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook. It can also establish your business as an authority within a niche or field related to your core industry.
For large businesses and corporations, blogging can be a fantastic way to talk about new services or products and give a comfortable and less formal, inside view of the innovations of the company. Blogging can be more interesting for users because of it’s freedom from dry formality. Corporate leaders and staff can use blogging to build a relationship with users and quickly respond to and address their needs. It is vital for users/customers to feel like they are being listened to and understood. Blogging can also be a way to give companies a greater visibility to other organizations, partners and in tangential markets. Polls, feedback forms, star ratings and other user inputs can also give larger companies a way to understand user needs and desires–as companies collect feedback based on topics and announcements during the innovation life-cycle.
Goal-setting for business bloggers
- As your team questions the value of blogging, you should first answer the simple question: Is blogging simply a passing interest for your team? Can your team really commit to the platform and process and maintain it longterm?
- Define a main purpose for each blog. By defining a purpose, you prevent writers block and also don’t let readers feel confused. Having a focus keeps content, thoughts and topics focused on the business purpose of the blog–it also helps you define the value of the blog and the time commitments of blogging clear to key stakeholders.
- Create a content plan: Start by writing a list of topics and categories that your blog will cover. Try to draft a schedule of how frequently your business can and should publish content on the blog. Assign resources to this content plan (see next).
- Commit the right resources to the blog. If your business begins to blog, you need to account for the time it takes to construct and edit posts. Remember your blog speaks on behalf of your organization so quality is important. Start by creating a content plan, which outlines the topics your blog will focus on and who in the organization will write the articles and when. Make sure that blogging fits within the writer’s workload–don’t over commit or let the blog fall by the wayside.
- To advertise or not: If you are blogging for business, you need to question whether the amount of money you can make from advertising is worth it. You can always do a test run with advertising and measure it’s impact. Also, go back to your original purpose for blogging, does advertising distract from or cloud that purpose. For example, if your purpose was to inform a user on the advantages of using your product, then advertising the products or other companies would potentially harm the core purpose of the blog.
