This is not a trick question: Is your blog worth the effort you’re putting into it?
While any marketer will be quick to tell you that your company’s website needs a blog, that’s only true if you’re using it the right way. If you’re not getting the intended results from your blog, then it’s possible that you could be better off investing your time and energy in other ways.
For starters, a standard rule of thumb for marketing efforts is that you should be putting in about 25% of your time for production and 75% of your time for promotion. When it comes to blogging, many companies spend all their time creating content and very little time promoting it.
(However, it should be said that content promotion can include SEO research and keyword implementation, which might also feel like part of the creation process.)
You also, of course, need to set yourself some reasonable and measurable goals.
There’s no real reason to get your blog up and running if you aren’t sure about why. Doing something for the sake of doing it is never a good idea; if you aren’t certain of the reasoning yourself, be sure to check back in with the marketers who made the recommendations in the first place to see if they’re tracking and measuring the results from the blog or can explain what you should expect.
One thing that people take as a sign of obvious success is traffic. Whether it’s organic traffic (people who find you through Google) or inorganic traffic (people who find you through promoted links or paid ads), it’s usually a good sign when people are visiting your blog—right? Isn’t that the whole point?
Actually, no.
Having people find your blog isn’t the entire point. You want people to find your blog so that they can learn about your business, and ideally complete a transaction. They also need to be the right people—the audience who is most likely to need your company and complete a transaction. Having tons of traffic with no real interest in your company isn’t worth your team’s valuable time.
On a similar note, if you have the right kind of traffic, make sure you’re getting the right results. Are they reading your blogs and clicking away? Or are they also then contacting you for services?
So, you might be asking yourself: Do you really need a blog on your website?
The answer might surprise you. It might be time to change your approach to your blog—or your website. You might want to consider some immediate changes to reinvest your time and effort.
If you want to make sure that you’ve got the best approach to your digital marketing, we can help.
We can check if you’re making the most of your current strategy—or make recommendations to maximize on the work you’re already putting in.
As the saying goes: Blogging worth doing is worth doing right.