Wednesday, June 4th, 2008
The other day, a friend told me about a blog and asked for my ideas. The blog was intended to generate revenue or, at least, lead to business opportunities. It wasn’t working though, as far as he could tell.
I’d faced this issue a couple years ago, so I knew what the person was saying. You try and try to write things that will be of interest to others, yet you see no return on your investment. Why? What can you do about it? Are there better options? Let’s consider those three questions.
Why
Blogging can consume far more resources than it returns in revenue. This is particularly true when one is creating a general blog, rather than a blog that is limited to a single, narrow topic.
A few thoughts about the issues with blogging for business…
Time. It takes a lot of time to build a relationship and, until a relationship exists, customers are unlikely to buy. This is particularly true in an online environment where so many sites are competing for attention.
Offering. If a person is providing an inexpensive, low risk solution to a problem, a buyer may be comfortable making the purchase based on one or two articles. If the “product” is less tangible, the purchaser may want more information.
Prior experience. If everyone else does something in a way that doesn’t work, potential customers have great difficulty believing that you can do something in a way that will work.
Readers. Think about who is reading your blog. Do these people need the information that you are sharing? More importantly, do they believe that they need the information? Often times, the readers may not recognize themselves in the blog that you are writing. When they do recognize themselves in the blog, they may conclude that you will address the issue down the road or they may lack funding to buy the services and products you offer.
Time and contacts. A former student who specialized in telemarketing said that it takes an average of eight calls before a potential customer should be expected to purchase what the telemarketer is offering. Online, would this number be any less? How many blogs contain eight articles that would be of interest to the same person?
Expectations. A lot of information on the internet is available for free. This creates an expectation that all information can be obtained for free.
Resource limits. Speaking from personal experience, most of my clients and potential clients can find the information that I offer on the internet… Somewhere. If they go that route though, they will expend a lot of time and make a lot of mistakes. Looking at this from a client’s perspective, which is more important - time, absence of mistakes, or money? An established firm may conclude that time and absence of mistakes are most important. New businesses are more likely to conclude that money and saving it is the most important.
What can you do?
When faced with a challenge, it is important to find ways to turn that into an opportunity. A couple options that I considered with blogs were subscription-based blogs and growing readership.
One option that my friend tried was to create a subscription-based blog. I didn’t try this option so I can’t speak from experience on that. It seems to me that a subscription-based blog might be effective, if a person had a narrow focus. With a broad focus, it is harder to appeal to all people. Previously, I’d suggested that a group of us get together and create a subscription-based blog that would be a bit like an online magazine. Who knows if that approach would have worked…
A second option in this situation would be to focus on growing the readership. With regular, loyal readers, a blog is more likely to be discussed. From these discussions, some people (either readers or writers) may spot new opportunities. They may mention the blog or the author to others who will need the person’s help. Readership might be grown through marketing, public speaking, including the blog on business cards, presence in online communities, and a variety of other solutions.
In my case, there was a better option. For others, this may not be the case.
Better options?
When faced with a challenge, it helps me to focus on what has worked in the past. For me, that meant cutting down on my online efforts and beefing up my offline ones. This approach may be wrong for some, and that’s okay. Each of us has to use strategies that work for us.
When I talk with people about topics that matter to them, they often find value in what I am saying. Rather than throwing ideas out to see what sticks, I simply returned to that approach. For me, that takes the forms of face-to-face discussions, email, and telephone. Others may be able to carry on such discussions via a blog, and I accept this.
As I told my friend though, try a variety of options and choose the ones that work best for you.
Regardless of what this means for your business, I hope that you will take care and make it a great day.
