“Write a new blog entry” has been on my to-do list for a while.  My last entry is looking somewhat dated. And so again, I find myself in the same situation as many of clients, asking whether a blog on my web site is an asset or a liability.

To answer that question, we need to remember what a company blog is for. Your web site already explains who you are, what you offer, why you believe you are the best alternative around. If your company is working with the media, you’ve also got a conventional news channel for distributing updates.

So what can a blog add? A good company blog is:

• An informal news channel for anecdotes, opinions and impressions
• A way for your prospects and customers to get to know your team and hear their voices
• An opportunity to interact with other bloggers and opinion-leaders in your industry
• An additional channel for touching customers and prospects (via your RSS feed or mail)
• And last but not least, a dynamic content area that shows you are making waves

Maintaining a blog is more effort than it seems. Yes, the writing style is informal and readers are relatively forgiving about inaccuracies. But you still need to come up with a steady stream of ideas, and you need to make time to put them into words, even when there are dozens of urgent customer-related tasks to perform.

So should you start a blog? Here are some questions you should ask:

• Can you write a new entry once a month (at least)
• Is there somebody in your organization who can take responsibility for the management and the raw content?
• Do you have a resource (internal or outsourced) who can write well?

If the answer to those 3 questions is yes, it’s probably a good time to start a blog. Here are some tips on how to make an effective blog without a lot of resources:

• Pick topics that have long-term interest and relevance. So even if the entry has been there a while, the content hasn’t passed its due date.
• Keep the entries short. A blog entry can be as little as one paragraph.
• Make a list of questions that prospects and customers ask frequently, and answer them one at a time.
• Take 15 minutes to write down your reaction to an important piece of news in your industry.
• Tell anonymous anecdotes about your customers and partners – be careful to ensure that nobody could be insulted.
• Get help! If you have ideas, but no time, hire a copywriter to create the blog entries for you. You’ll find that several good entries can be created out of one phone interview.

Happy blogging!

Amy

My new web site is finally live.  Many thanks to those who made it possible, especially Lisa (www.litesites.co.il) and Steve (www.sdg.co.il) who were exceedingly professional and patient.

Despite the fact that I create web content for clients all the time, it was surprisingly difficult to set aside time to do my own. Like many of us, I tend to put any assignment on a deadline ahead of building the infrastructure for my own business. But there was something else – precisely because I’m a marketing professional, I expected my own site to live up to my highest standards. And I wanted to do it myself.  So whenever I did succeed in finding time to work on my site, it was never enough.

Finally I realized that I needed to step back and follow the same advice that I would give a client. There is no such thing as a project without constraints. There is never enough time, there is never a large enough budget. But any marketing tool that could be working for you, right now, is more effective than the one that you keep putting off!

So welcome to my new site and stop by again (or sign up for the RSS feed) to read this blog.

Amy