Blogs have been around for quite some time. It is quickly becoming the other alternative to receive news. It has evolved from a place to rant and rave about a topic or share personal ins and outs to a tool used by businesses to share information with employees or customers to replace newsletters.
If you’re considering a blog for internal company communications, think about what you want the blog to represent and the type of information you want to share. Plan your blog before you start researching the tools to use it or assign someone to maintain it. Otherwise, you can select the wrong tool and cause the maintenance person to spend too much time on a “part-time” task. Also, if the blog is going to replace a current company newsletter in print or by email, you might want to do a survey to make sure employees are willing to check out the web instead of having paper they can read on break. or send it directly to your desktop via Email. If no one is willing to go to the blog to get the information, it is a waste of time and money to create a blog.
If you are considering a blog for external communication, usually for existing or potential customers, but could also include vendors, then you need to consider the information that will be shared as well as its presentation. Should the blog have a consistent look and feel with your other branding and marketing tools? Should it be part of your website or separate from it? Is it primarily a marketing tool, training program, information sharing, or some combination? Who will provide the articles/posts for the blog and how often? If you plan to use the blog to replace a newsletter, how will current readers know when the blog is updated? Will you send an email to notify them of updates, or just let them know the planned posting frequency so they can see for themselves? Will you be using Twitter or another social network to communicate your blog as part of your marketing campaign?
If you’re a small business or independent consultant considering a blog, do you really need one? Perhaps it would be better to partner with another consultant or company to share the responsibility of a blog that would benefit both of you. If you want to write primarily to share information, but don’t want to create your own blog, consider guest posting on an existing independent blog that provides posts with the type of information you want to share. You can check the candidate’s blog to see if they have more than one person writing. If they do, find a contact and send an email suggesting your topic and asking them if they would like a guest article or post by you. This saves you time building a blog and finding an audience. This will increase your confidence in your ability to provide data for the blog should you later decide that you need your own blog, and you will then be ready for the hardest part of blogging.
Before creating a blog, ask the questions above for the type of blog you are considering. Then decide if your business really needs a blog.