Entrepreneurs: Blogging Requires Commitment. Are You Ready?

What is your company’s blogging strategy?

That is one of the first questions I ask when talking to a client for the first time. I understand it’s not a simple question, specially if the company hasn’t been blogging yet.

Just to give you an idea, the answer involves things like how often are you planning to publish content, who is in charge of developing this content, what’s the plan for front-end interaction, how is it going to be distributed and where. That is of course, besides knowing exactly what is the business goal behind blogging and how it integrates with the rest of your marketing overall strategy.

It’s 2am in Santiago, Chile. I arrived yesterday at 1am after a 12-hour flight from Los Angeles that was originally delayed almost 24 hours. I’m finally in my room after a day of meetings and writing a huge proposal. After the February earthquake, I admit I’m not too thrilled about the 16th floor but at least it overlooks beautiful Las Condes business center, so I’ll focus on that.

I wrote and published a post before flying since I knew I wouldn’t have the time during my stay here. You know, I try to be consistent with that stuff and write at least once a week. It’s been almost 48 hours and I barely go back to my blog to see what’s up before crashing, I’m really half-way crashed as you can imagine. BUT, I see that my post has more than 200 Retweets and quite a few comments I haven’t reply too… I guess I’m not going to sleep yet.

Am I insane? Let me ask you this, if you just finished speaking in front of an audience and now you open for some Q&A time, people start expressing their thoughts on your subject and asking you questions, would you respond to them? or would you ignore them and just stay quiet?

That’s what I thought.

Blogging requires of a huge commitment and every company or entrepreneur should ask him/herself a series of questions before diving into the so popular blogosphere. So let me see if I can stay awake a little longer and articulate some of these basic questions…

Let’s assume that your business objective and your online goals are clear and aligned. Let’s jump right into how are we going to approach this blogging thing.

Content Development

• Who in the company is in charge of this? I understand there is a big chance there’s nobody around you so… guess who? Acknowledge that.
• How often are you going to write and publish content? Forget about what everybody says, frequency builds traction and all that stuff. It’s fine if it’s only once a week, just establish that. You can even consider using an editorial calendar.
• Do you have enough ideas for content? Is this a topic with enough juice that you can write stuff on a weekly basis? Consider keeping a document to write possible headline ideas, see how many you can come up with.
• What is the time and cost that this will take? If the person in charge is one of your employees or maybe it is you, your time has a value too and you’re most likely the highest (or the only) salary.

Distribution

• Again, who is in charge of this? Consider the time spent on this task or the cost.
• Where are you going to distribute the content? Twitter, Facebook?
• If your distribution plan involves social media, what is the strategy for that? it can’t only be self-promotion. How are you going to approach social media.
• Are you being consistent with your brand in different social platforms? Key messages, design, etc.

Front-End Interaction

• Who is going to deal with interaction inside your blog?
• Are you going to reply to every single comment? or only the ones that engage in meaningful conversations?
• How quick are you going to reply?
• Should you set up email alerts for those comments?
• How are you going to interact with outside reactions? You can’t ignore what happens on Twitter, Facebook and the other platforms that are relevant to you.
• How are you going to monitor those reactions? Is there a tool you’re planning on using?
• How are you going to approach those reactions? Are you planning to engage on all existing conversations? or how will you decide when to do so and when to pass?

Metrics

• What are the metrics that are relevant to your business? Traffic, content engagement, subscriptions, conversions? Or do you only care about Retweets?
• How are you going to measure the impact?
• What tools are you going to use to measure performance? Google Analytics, PostRank?
• How are you planning to adjust your strategy? Based on what results?

Help Me Finish This Post

Is there more? I’m sure there is but I’m falling to sleep and I want to send out the post. Help me by sharing your thoughts in the comments section. What else do you think it’s important to consider when planning to start a blog for business?

Final Thought

Not that there are rules for blogging, I don’t believe in rules for anything. I think you should be creative in everything you do, specially in business and marketing. But I think the point here is that there are some basic items to consider as an entrepreneur or as a company before jumping in for the wrong reasons, without a strategy or without knowing what it takes to enjoy some success.

Blogging is a great opportunity. Do it. Plan and commit to it. Just sayin’

Thank you all for the comments, retweets and likes. You rock!

Good night from Santiago!