Blogging has established its place within the inbound marketing lineup as one of the most effective tools for increasing your online presence.
Yet for all the potential benefits blogging can deliver for your business. A lot of folks fall foul of not updating it regularly, leading the blog to become a lame duck.
Nevertheless, the benefits of setting up a blog and maintaining it are immense. Depending on what you decide to blog about, your blog can help establish your business as a thought leader in your industry.
Setting up a blog is easy. However it’s not as clear-cut as some would believe. Before entering the blogosphere, you have to ask yourself – do you have the resources to keep it going long-term and prevent it from becoming a lame duck?
In a lot of cases, you can avoid having a lame duck of a blog before you even start one. It just needs a little bit of thinking. Check out the questions below and see if you got what it takes to blog.
Protecting Your Blog From Becoming A Lame Duck
Do you have time?
One blog post a month isn’t going to cut it.
While some may think blogging will deliver a flood of traffic overnight – it takes some consistency and time before you can truly see the benefits.
Ideally you would want to produce a blog post everyday in order to see results quickly. But realistically you should look to write at least one quality post a week.
Do you have the people?
You may not have the time to write once a week, but all is not lost! If you’ve got a pool of workers, willing to contribute to the blog. Great! Or better yet, invite guest bloggers from outside your business to contribute.
Getting others involved helps ease the burden of producing content regularly. Plus it’s a fantastic way to rally support for the blog.
Guest bloggers on the other hand help expand your reach and get you in front of their own network when they promote their own posts.
How are you going to promote it?
For your blog to attract readers, you need to promote it somehow. Figure out how you’re going to push it out to people before committing to a blog.
In most cases, you’ll probably go for the Facebook and Twitter updates. However social bookmarking sites like, Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon can also do the trick.
Having a blog is great. But until you can attract a flood of readers to follow your blog, it will feel like a ghost town.
Can you commit to blogging?
For your blog to be a success – everyone involved needs to be committed to the cause! That means everyone chips in, whether it’s promoting online or writing a blog post, everybody plays a role.
Otherwise you risk having a lame duck of a blog on your hands. And instead of a blog being something fun – it ends up becoming the dreaded chore nobody wants to do.
A blog schedule with a list of topics usually helps in this case, along with getting the commitment of everyone involved.
Do you have good writers?
Although you don’t need to be a novelist or an academic writer, grammar and spelling are still important. But more importantly, good writers can communicate more effectively and produce content more regularly.
This isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker for setting up a blog, but it’s something you might want to look out for. Grammar and spelling mistakes don’t exactly scream professionalism.
Blogs don’t need to be written in a formal tone and it’s better to keep the tone conversational. Remember who your audience is and keep it simple – a blog post is not a term paper you need to hand in at university. And the more you write the better you’ll become.
For your blog to avoid becoming a lame duck. Update it regularly (writing at least one blog post a week), stick to a blog schedule and get others involved. There’s nothing more boring for visitors, than having a blog that posts every couple of months.
(photo credit: Alan Cleaver)
