Business owners who decide that blogging is a great way to promote their business are correct. Unfortunately, many don’t understand the commitment that it takes before they will start seeing an increase in their bottom line. They figure they’ll buy the latest and greatest in blogging software, start blogging and simply watch their bank account fill up.
If you are looking for no BS, quality blogging resources, be sure to check out the Barnes Internet Marketer’s Resource Guide.
I can hear you saying blogging sounds great, but keep the following in mind:
- Few blogs succeed in the first six months of their existence. Blogging isn’t a situation where you make a few posts and see an immediate result. As a general rule, give yourself six months to a full year to expect significant results. However, there are tools that can help you cut this time down significantly, such as the Clickbump SEO! plugin.
- Without any tools such as the Clickbump SEO plugin, it’ll feel like you’re speaking to an empty stadium sized room for the first six months.
- Blogging generates appreciable and direct income for only a handful of blog owners. This is because most don’t have a clue about important issues such as Search Engine Optimization or how to build traffic to them. Due to this, most blogs end up being an indirect benefit to their owner’s business.
In my opinion, every business owner should be blogging. Yes, it will require a commitment, but if you make the commitment, blogging can generate healthy returns. The key to blogging success, as with other areas of your business, is to have goals. To make your blogging goals realistic, I recommend setting them up in a six month cycle. This way, there will be time to get the work done and will give you something to shoot for. If you set up your initial blogging goals with a one month cycle, you could end up not seeing the results you are looking for, become discouraged and quit blogging. Give yourself a chance, make your blogging goals realistic and achievable.
For example, this may be a good starting place for your blogging goals:
- Answer the top 50 questions your customers ask you.
- Write at least two posts a week (Google loves sites that are frequently updated)
- Send at least 25 potential clients a link to your blog
- Send all of your current clients a link to your blog
- Check your blog daily and answer any questions that need answering
- Generate at least five clients from your blogging activities
- Sign up at least 500 subscribers to your blog or RSS feed
- Have 75% of your traffic coming from search engines
These goals are very realistic as well as attainable. Some examples of poor blogger goals:
- Earn a five figure income from my blogging activities
- Show a number 1 search engine ranking for a very competitive phrase
Both of these goals may very well be attainable, but the first one won’t likely happen in 6 months. But even if you earned $15,000 from your blogging activities, it may not necessarily help you if you’ve spent $20,000 getting that $15k. Ranking number one for a very competitive phrase could very well help you, but you’ll need to do plenty of research on this first to determine this.
For more information on setting your blogging goals, please see my Setting Goals post.
In addition to giving your business a nice boost in income over time, blogging can be a lot of fun.
Be sure to focus on posting on topics / areas of your business that you enjoy the most. This way, you’ll find that writing those two posts a week is something you’ll look forward to and not dread. Remember, just as with anything else in life, you’re going to get out of it what you put into it. Blogging is no different.
