Is Blogging a Necessary Evil?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

I’ve written my share of posts explaining why a business blog is valuable, but some site owners still feel like blogging is just another uphill battle for their business to take on. It’s no easy task setting time aside every day to write a new blog post and then commit to promoting it (essential for success!) once they go live. Every site owner struggles to come up with relevant topics, attract loyal readers and build their reputation as an industry authority. Blogging, as part of an inbound marketing campaign, is an incredibly long term process and it’s very easy to lose faith after investing three months of hard work and not seeing the return you were expecting.

The worst thing you could do as a site owner is launch your blog and then let it go stagnant. While I truly believe that just about every business can benefit from having a blog, I’d rather you not launch a blog until you’re ready and know you can commit than create a blog and put it on the back burner for the next six months.

I wrote my first post for the Search Engine Optimization Journal on March 18, 2007 and have been publishing at least post every day (Monday-Friday anyway) since then. My company launched an integrated business blog back in January of this year (again, at least one post a day) and I even create a blog for my SEO consultant site (started as one a day, now down to one a week). Between me and my employees at Brick Marketing we are pumping out as many as 4 or 5 350-500 word blog posts a day across the three blogs. That’s a lot of blogging!

While every industry is different, the world of SEO (and marketing in general) demands that companies and consultants operate at least one blog; it’s pretty much expected. But this means that there are an overabundance of marketing blogs that cater to a wide variety of audiences interested in marketing: small business owners, web developers and site owners, copywriters, consultants and other marketing professionals, to name a few. The Internet is saturated with marketing blogs!

So why do I bother?

At the very least, a business blog helps your company be more transparent. It’s a place to connect with your customers and let your brand’s personality shine through. It’s a forum for your company to share knowledge, promote your own products (although you should keep promotional posts to a minimum) and tell your side of the story.

Secondly, I stay very realistic about my expectations when it comes to blogging. I know that one blog post, no matter how inspired, is not going to generate 100 leads for my company; that’s just not the way it works. There are so many other blogs my target audience could read instead and I know I’m not the biggest player in the SEO world. I blog to find that one diamond in the rough client whose needs I am perfectly suited to meet. My blog posts are how I find and connect with those potential clients.

I believe that content marketing (like blogging) is the foundation for which all of your Internet marketing is built upon. Without content marketing, you will never gain any traction. It may be a competitive field, but you can’t compete at all unless you are willing to try!

Blogging isn’t a necessary evil; it’s just necessary.