In a word, no. But let’s dive into this, because as with everything in your business, it depends upon your overall strategy and goals.
Reasons to Blog
Back when blogging was brand new, if you weren’t blogging, you weren’t very current. Everyone had a blog. Everyone. People obsessed over creating 3 new blog posts per week, then worried about getting them seen, making sure images were perfect, then cross-posting them on Pinterest and Facebook. But it made sense for many businesses to do that — and it still does.
Great reasons to create a blog or continue the one you have?
- If your business is education-based: Do you teach people how to do things? Blog posts are a great way to position yourself as an authority so your audience wants to work with and buy from you.
- If you’re working on building your online brand: Visibility is everything, and blogging is one way to increase the number of eyes on your website. More visitors to your website can equal more people buying from you. Studies show that businesses that include a blog on their website have 55% more website visitors than those businesses that don’t. That’s a statistic you can pay attention to.
- To generate income: Blogging has the potential to increase your income both directly and indirectly. Direct income is if your blog post focuses on a product or service you offer and you make sales through it, or if you have Google ads or affiliate links in your blog posts. Indirect is if your blog attracts more people to your website (see visibility above), and they spend more time looking on your offerings after they’ve read the blog post, and subsequently want to buy from or work with you. Score either way.
- Blogging supports your social media strategy. If your business is a heavy Instagram user, for example, and you have quite a few followers, you’ll want to keep giving them fresh content that keeps you at the forefront of their minds. Add your blog posts to your IG content with a “link in bio” to encourage engagement and develop trust.
- You enjoy blogging and it connects you with your audience. We’re not big advocators of doing something that you hate simply because you think you should be doing it. Except for flossing, but we digress. If you really love blogging, then do it! That’s reason enough.
Reasons to NOT Blog
Just as there are great reasons to blog, there are valid reasons to skip it altogether. In our experience, these are 5 reasons to not add blogging to your to-do list:
- You hate it. If you hate it or are not a great writer, either don’t do it or hire it out. Life is too short to do things you hate.
- Your income doesn’t depend upon it. Unless you love it, if it doesn’t contribute to your marketing strategy and bottom line, skip it.
- Your sales come primarily from your storefront or email marketing. We have clients who blog and those who don’t. They have different reasons for doing it or not doing it, but it works for them. The ones who don’t, typically get their sales from either storefronts or robust email marketing.
- You’re not ready to commit the time and effort. If you can’t commit to it, and you don’t have anyone on your team that can commit, and you opt to not hire it out, then don’t do it. Better to wait until you’re in a position to do it well than to do it poorly, which will reflect negatively on your business.
- You don’t use social media for your business and have no plans to. Is there a way to blog effectively without also being on social media? Perhaps, but to be honest, we haven’t seen a good model of that. Blogging and social media tend to go hand in hand, so if your business has zero social media presence and does not plan to change that, wait on blogging.
