The online world has changed, throughout the years, what marketing was all about. Marketing has become much more social, and more direct towards their target market. What usually was a laborious and costly marketing campaign, became much more easier and low-cost. But there are still some things that you should consider before utilizing online methods.
The most popular method as of the moment is still marketing through blogging. It makes marketing feel much more human and genuine to users, and at the same time, show potential markets what you are about.
And as great as blogging for marketing sounds, it is not for everyone; most especially for small businesses. There are certainly some advantages to blogging for businesses, but maybe not for small businesses.
Here are 5 reasons why blogging may not be for you when starting a small business:
You don’t have a realistic goal
Now, you have to understand, great exposure does not always mean great sales. Your brand may be easily recognized, but your product may not be that well accepted.
You have to ask yourself this question. What are you hoping the blog will do? You likely won’t boost sales, as less than half of business bloggers said their blog achieved that goal. By contrast, 88 percent said it generated great exposure for their brand.
If sales is what you are after, then it would be much more logical to put your efforts into developing a great product that would easily sell.
You don’t use social media
Many people think you write a blog post and — presto — thousands of people will stampede to your site. But blogging doesn’t work like that. After you write it, someone has to promote that post online. This is where social-media skills come in.
You don’t trust your bloggers
If you’re delegating blogging, you need to give that person the authority to represent your brand online. Otherwise, it’ll be rounds of editing by committee, resulting in junk posts. Also, you would have the time to write blog posts yourself. And the time you would use to create a blog post would be much more better spent thinking of ways to make your products and services much more better for your consumers.
You want to close the comments
Many businesses are afraid of what their customers might say on their blog. But blogs are all about engagement, so you need to be willing to take reader feedback. Also, a bad comment can affect a small business in a huge way. Misinformation is generated through hurtful comments, and should be avoided by small businesses.
No one has time
Quite possibly, the most important thing to note, and what is common about the things that have been listed before. Be honest with yourself about whether you could spare at least two or three hours a week to write. If no one at the business can do it, consider hiring a professional writer — the study found 10 percent of small business owners hired this task out. Without somebody committed to posting, you’ll end up with a dusty blog that hasn’t been updated in six months, which makes a worse impression than if you never blogged at all.
A small business entails a lot of time invested in it. And having a blog requires you to invest a portion of your time into it. And since a blog is in the marketing aspect of a business, scrutinizing ever word on it would be needed, since a blog reflects what a business represents. So, carefully think about whether blogging would be great for your small business.
Sheine Austria is a professional writer whose passion is digital media, technology and blogging. She also used to do some photography in her college days in Upskilled Australia.
Image Credit: Shutterstock.com
