Jason Preston at Blog Business Summit says yes. I say “no.”
I think nearly every business could benefit from a blog. Of course, nearly every business could benefit from giving everyone in the US a free sample of their product, running an ad during the Super Bowl, or hiring 10,000 direct sales reps. But, unless you have infinite resources (and if you do, can I come work for you?) you need to make some choices.
Blogging takes time and effort, and these are resources that can be applied to a lot of other things. If you are going to have a blog for your business, you need to set it up, and you need to figure out what you are going to talk about there that will be compelling to your audience - not you, your audience - and be prepared to create that content regularly. That means sitting down and planning out blog entries and writing them, or finding someone who can do that for you and paying them.
It’s well worth it for lots of businesses. But there are only so many hours in the day and so many dollars in the bank account, so it might not be the thing you need to do right now.
But here’s where Jason makes a good point. A lot of businesses don’t have a clear understanding of how blogging can help them, or what the actual effort involved is. (Some think it’s more than it really is and some think it’s much less.) So before you decide that you do or do not need a blog, get a realistic idea of what’s involved and what it can do for you. Talk to peers who’ve done it - and who’ve decided not to. Talk to social media experts (I always am happy to brainstorm with people, as are many of my peers). Make an informed decisions.
One final note: not every business needs to run out and blog right now. But every business needs a blog strategy. Writing your own blog might not be the best use of your time now, but there is probably somebody blogging about you, or your industry, or your market. You do need to pay attention to that and figure out how to engage with those bloggers and the communities around them. (Engaging might mean participating; it might also mean collecting information to guide your own product and marketing decisions.)
No, not every business needs a blog. But everybody needs to be thinking about blogging.
March 14th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Well put! We just finished an internal book group reading Geoff Livingston’s “Now Is Gone,” which really tries to drives home the points you make. A struggle I’ve seen with some of our clients who “want to blog” is coming to the realization that they actually have to have something to *contribute* to the blogosphere (and, “Why you should buy our products/services” is not a valid contribution). Do they actually have a person/people internally who are engaging in the relevant community and have regular, valuable, coherent contributions to make to it? If not…then don’t try to blog!