The Risks of Writing a Company Blog

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

In my 12+ years as an SEO professional, I’ve found that just about every business can benefit from publishing a company blog. It doesn’t matter if it’s B2B or B2C, or what industry your business operates in—a good business blog can be invaluable for your SEO and Internet marketing in general. There are probably hundreds of blog posts out there full of great reasons why you should start a company blog. (I have even written a few such posts myself).

But are there any good reasons to NOT launch a company blog?

If you think launching a blog is enough.
“If you build it, they will come,” doesn’t work with business blogging. You can’t throw up a blog and hope that readers are going to magically appear. It take a lot of work and time to get your blog noticed, attract a loyal readership and build your blog to be a reputable source of industry news and advice. Without a strong content promotion campaign, your blog is like a ship that has never left port. It floats, but doesn’t really do much else of value.

If you don’t have anyone to write new posts.
For most businesses, the number one problem with content marketing is actually creating the content. You may not be the best writer on your staff, you may not have the time to write 2-3 blog posts a week (hint: you do), but you have to find someone who has the skills and the time! Launching a business blog and failing to regularly update it means you’re sitting on stale content. It can negatively reflect on your brand and won’t attract any new readers. What good is an outdated blog?

If you are just doing it for SEO.
Content must always be written for the reader, never the search engines! Yes, a business blog is a critical component of any inbound marketing campaign (which includes SEO), but that can’t be the only reason to decide to launch a business blog. If that’s the only value you can see, you’re focus is too narrow and you’ll end up pigeonholing yourself. Don’t lose the forest for the trees with your blog!

If you’re doing it because you are “supposed” to.
If you aren’t excited to write for your business blog, you’re readers are going to notice. The best blogs have personality and useful insights for their readers. They don’t just rehash the same tired information in the same boring way. Yes, you probably should have a business blog, but there has to be some internal motivation to update it with great content. If you don’t believe in it, no one else will.