By Yvonne DiVita and George Kittredge
Roughly ten years ago, when businesses started to realize that they should have websites, and decided that they needed to hire professional website designers to build it - their thinking was, "Build it and they will come."
We are reminded of the 1989 movie, Field of Dreams, and that one great scene where James Earl Jones as Terrance Mann says, "People will come, Ray...And they'll pass over the money without even thinking about it."
Ah yes, being on the Internet held tremendous promise - all those millions of eyeballs gazing at your stuff. And they'll come and pass over the money. Many, many businesses jumped on the Internet band wagon and waited and...waited, and...waited, and some are still waiting.
With little thought given to the website's content or search engine optimization (SEO), and with the primary focus being on the company and not the reader, most websites became a static, digital catalog that failed to deliver on those wonderful promises.
And so today, it's somewhat amazing to see this same misconception surfacing again with business blogs. The belief being that if I build a blog, they will come - that blogs are easy. All I need to do is jot down a few sentences and I'm good to go.
The truth is, business blogs, to be successful, require careful strategy at the start and professional execution going forward. Things like:
- What will be your blog's purpose?
- What type of content will you publish?
- How will the blog fit with your organization's overall marketing, PR and communication strategies?
- Who will write the posts?
- What will be your posting frequency?
- What will be your comment guidelines?
- What will be your linking strategies?
Without a solid strategy, without knowing what you hope to achieve, it will be difficult for your blog to return the positive result(s) you desire.
No Ray, with business blogs, people just won't come. You'll have to create a reason. Or as the voice also said, "Go the distance."
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