Have you been neglecting your business blog? Looking around on technology company sites, I’m finding a surprising number of blogs that haven’t been updated for many months.
There are so many reasons that this can happen:
- You’ve been meaning to get around to posting, but last quarter was so busy.
- When you started it, you had no idea it would be so much work.
- Your executives were excited about having a blog, but never contribute articles.
When you look at the blog, you see a to-do list item. But when website visitors click through to the blog, all they see is that your business has a problem executing its strategies. That’s not a good message to put on your website.
Blogging takes commitment. If your company isn’t a tech giant with a huge staff, if you’re a pre-IPO company hanging on until the next round of funding, then you’ve got a lot on your plate. But if you’ve been seriously neglecting your blog, it’s time to reassess your strategy.
Blogging frequency isn’t everything
You don’t have to blog everyday in a business blog. No one really expects a blog that represents a corporation or a CEO to be populated daily with fresh content. Frankly, I’d worry about a CEO that had nothing else to do but write daily blog postings!
If the blog postings are rich and informative, they can still deliver search engine optimization goodness, even if relatively infrequent. For example, Mike Workman writes an entertaining CEO blog as the CEO of Pillar Data Systems. He seems to post about twice a month, but the posts are long, rich in content, and entertaining. I might add that they are also in his unique voice – I cannot believe that a PR agency writes this blog. The frequency is fine, and the blog is good enough to entice you to subscribe by RSS just to see what he’ll say next.
Commit to consistency
If you have a blog, commit to at least a minimal frequency – one that’s suited to the length and type of posting that you make, as well as the resources available for blogging. Then schedule the time and resources to meet that objective. It always helps to have a few prewritten entries put away for a busy time.
You may have to widen your search for contributors. You can invite guest contributors and partners or hire individuals to write regular postings for you. Just be sure that everyone understands the objective of the blog – whether it’s thought leadership, search engine optimization, community building, or whatever else you have in mind.
Or set it free
What if you cannot or commit the resources for consistent and high quality postings? You are better off removing the blog link from your website and closing down the blog than sending people to a clearly neglected site.
A blog doesn’t have to be part of your content strategy, and it’s better to have no blog at all than one that looks like you cannot follow through on your objectives.
Anne Janzer 
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More posts of this qulitay. Not the usual c***, please