Five Common Myths About Blogging You Need To know

You’ve heard it for a while now I’m sure – you need to start a blog. What has been taking you so long? Your business needs it. The pundits all say that content is essential for lead generation, and if you’re going to acquire new customers at a lower cost, blogging can be one of the most effective ways.

I can certainly attest to blogging as a successful tactic for my own business, and for my client’s businesses. Quality content is still king.

Hubspot wrote an article that showed there’s a direct correlation between the frequency of blogging and lead generation for both B-to-B and B-to-C businesses. And after looking at the data, if you want to grow leads and sales you’d be crazy not to consider starting a blog.

There’s A Direct Correlation Between Frequency of Blogging and Lead Generation

But hold on for a minute.

I’ve interacted with many business people and clients over the years about their perceptions of blogging, and below are some of the common myths that have come up in conversation that you should know before diving in. We all want to grow leads, but like anything, doing some research beforehand and setting expectations correctly will save you time, money, and headaches.

Blogging Myth #1: Write Posts About Your Business

The type of content you write is critical to the success of your blogging efforts, but writing about yourself is not going to help you. Your customers have questions, they have problems – write about those issues most important to your customers. Sure you can write a post every now and then about your company, but the bulk of your blogging should be about the main pain points your customers have, not about you.

Blogging Myth #2: Write And Google Will Send You Traffic

Blogging is a long-term strategy. Just because you write content and put it on your site doesn’t mean Google will send you any traffic at all, never mind they may not even find your content. Producing high-quality content frequently that your customers are searching for and that they want to read on an ongoing basis will greatly increase the traffic you receive from Google.

Blogging Myth #3: Anyone Can Write The Blog For You

There are many skill sets and characteristics required to be effective at blogging – putting anyone in this role is not a good idea.

• Is this person an effective writer and can they write for the web?
  • Writing for the web is very different than writing for print.
• Does this person understand how to do even basic keyword research?
• Do they understand SEO?
• Does this person understand your customers?
• How is this person with understanding and implementing on-page SEO and optimization?

You’re short on resources so you hire a college intern to produce some content for you. Starting off this way is half-baked (if baked at all), and isn’t going to get you very far. Producing quality content is one of the most important pieces to the digital marketing puzzle and a college intern isn’t going to get it done. Make sure you’re committed to putting someone in place that understands blogging, writing, and understands your customers, or at least put the training, resources, and commitment behind training someone so they can be effective for you.

Blogging Myth #4: Writing Blogs Is Inexpensive

Done right, blogging is not an inexpensive task depending on the results you are searching for. There are many components that need to be in place to make each blog post effective.

Planning out your content is just one of those pieces – a roadmap of content is important but takes time (related post here about how to create a blog strategy). What about SEO (search engine optimization)? You need to integrate this into the blogging process, which includes keyword research and then writing the content that at least has the basics of SEO.

How about distribution? Where and how is the content going to be promoted? Are you going to promote via Facebook, send out in an email to your clients, promote via Twitter, or Pinterest? You don’t just want it to sit on your site without any love.

Blogging Myth #5: You Don’t Need A Blog

There are so many case studies of businesses (both large and small) that have grown sales far beyond what they could have through their existing marketing strategies. I suppose if your company isn’t embracing the web as an important marketing tactic, then you can ignore blogging. But remember, blogging acquires leads at a fraction of what traditional marketing does so there really is no excuse to not take blogging seriously regardless of whether you’re a large or small company, or B-2-B or B-2-C.

Blogging Acquires Leads At A Fraction Of The Cost

Finally, consider that some of the most in-demand marketing skills are related to digital marketing of which blogging is a component.

Have you started a blog, or tried starting one inside your company? Let me know how it’s going and what your struggles are in the comments below.