business blogging

Writing a business blog is a great way to promote your products or services. There’s no doubt about it. There are a large number of professionals and business owners from all different fields who are entering the blogging world, and understandably…they want to get results!

A big part of getting good results from your blog is simply writing consistently and creating content that is valuable to your readers over time. Truth be told, it’s not rocket science. Building a successful blog can give your business some very significant results. It just takes work. Like anything you build from scratch…it starts off very small and builds up over time. Eventually it will truly become a force to be reckoned with. It just takes time and diligence.

One of the biggest reasons many blogs are not successful is not because making them work is all that difficult. The reason is because most blog authors simply don’t stick with it and do the necessary work to get the results they want.

One thing that can help you stick with it over time is simply having a realistic perspective on what to expect when you launch your blog. I’ve come across a ton of misconceptions over time, and these seem to me to be the most prevalent. I hope that reviewing these Myths About Business Blogging will help readers know a bit more about what to expect.

Myths About Business Blogging

1. You can always make money from advertising. This really isn’t true. Unless by “money” you mean a few bucks a month. You need a lot of traffic to make any meaningful amount of money from advertising. A LOT of traffic. Most adveristing methods will pay out somewhere in the range of $1-3 per thousand visitors. I’ve tweaked Adsense modules to average $5 per thousand visitors, so if you’re getting 50,000 visitors per month…you’re making $250. If your blog is getting 50,000 visitors a month, you’re not going to be excited about $250 🙂
2. Blogging is easy. Blogging is simple, not easy. Many people approach blogging, unfortunately, with a traditional media mindset. In other words, they want to set something up and watch it grow, but they don’t want to tend to it much. The fact is that blogging is simple, and it doesn’t have to take all your time. But if you want significant results, you need to work on it a bit every day. It is that consistent effort and hustle that will make the difference. Think of all the millions of other websites out there. You have to stand out. The process is simple, but it requires consistent effort over time.
3. I can automate this sucker! We’ve all heard this before, and there are more tools out there now than ever before. Search engines and humans alike reward original and valuable content. Trust me, I’ve explored em all…automation is definitely doable. I could show you tools that will fill your blog up with awesome articles every day without you having to lift a finger. You will have an awesome looking blog that takes almost no time at all…and it will never go anywhere, because at the end of the day there are no short cuts. Tread lightly with any sales copy that claims to be able to make your blog or blog marketing automatic. Nothing replaces diligence and hard work.
4. This sounds like too much work. I don’t really need a business blog. One of the biggest mistakes is to assume that because you’ve not had a blog before, you don’t need one now. Your customers are online…you need to be here. Yes, it will take work, and you’ll have to learn some new things. But the alternative is not being here…where your customers are. The alternative is losing business more and more. There are no good alternatives to having a good blog for your business. You need one.
5. I should be able to have a thousand visitors a day or so within a few months…or any other completely arbitrary number you’ve pulled out of the air. Everyone wants a lot of traffic. It’s only natural. But the fact is that not every niche is a high traffic niche. That’s first off. Second of all, if you’re running a blog for a small business, especially a very small business like a home based operation, you likely don’t NEED a lot of traffic to meet your goals. Don’t get wrapped up in arbitrary numbers. Yes, Yahoo! gets 300 million visitors a month or so…you don’t need that much. I’ve had more than one very profitable site that gets less than 3,000 a month. It’s not always about high traffic. As more and more people get involved in internet marketing, and as it becomes essentially mandatory for all small businesses to have a strong internet presence, it’s less about volume and much more about high quality and creating value for your readers.

Trust me, you can do some serious damage with your small business blog over time. ROI is difficult to measure if not impossible, which is another hurdle we need to get over as business owners. We’re used to getting a fixed or predictable result with each marketing piece we put out. Blogging is marketing, but it’s more like networking. You’re contacting and communicating with your readers and customers through the use of this medium. This work, when you do it well, leads to more business coming your way.

As a business owner, you don’t demand a specific ROI from a social event in order for you to attend. You understand that getting out there and shaking hands, meeting people and talking about what you do is essential. You do it because it’s a good, necessary business practice. Blogging, likewise, is a necessary business practice.