Business Blogging: Are You Spending Too Much Time, or Too Little?

August 16, 2010 By Tia Peterson

It’s very common now to see a link to a blog on a website, no matter what the organization is or what it does. Blogs are found on websites belonging to churches, small businesses, huge corporations, real estate professionals and non-profit organizations.

What has happened is that business owners and marketing professionals realize the enormous potential blogs have for building and strengthening connections and communicating information (of any kind).

Blogging takes time, though. Writing, editing, finding/adding images and other media, and promoting the blog posts are time-consuming tasks and it’s important to set an appropriate time budget for such activities.

Business owners are often excited to begin blogging but then tire of the upkeep – the maintenance. A blog will die if it’s not updated consistently.

Or, they realize they cannot afford to spend as much time on their blogs as they would like, because they determine that ROI is low.

If you spend too little time blogging, you probably will not reap the benefits you were hoping it would bring because you have to put some time into it to make it work.

If you spend too much time, it’s possible that your investment will be far greater than the return, especially if you have not figured out a way to use blogging to increase your bottom line.

How do you strike the right balance?

Balance Time, Costs, and ROI

Blogging can be free or cost very little outside of the setup. But there is some cost involved regarding time.

The simplest way to calculate the cost of blogging as a marketing tool is to assign it an hourly rate just like the rest of your time. You can see that it can add up, especially if you are spending time every day blogging.

Once you have determined the blogging costs in terms of time spent, decide on an appropriate budget – one that you can afford.

Create Realistic Blogging Goals

Take your budget and then revisit your initial blogging goals so that you can determine whether or not they are realistic based on your available time and money.

If your business is brand new and your marketing budget is scarce, one thing I’d suggest is putting some weight on your blogging as a marketing method, and absorb some of that cost. If done well, you can reach a large number of people using your blog and social media channels like Twitter and YouTube. It would take time but almost no money.

If you’ve got time but no money, it’s a great way to get the word out.

If you’ve got money but no time, consider outsourcing or having your assistant do it for you. This will require some planning, and you’ll need to have a clear idea about what you will write about and how you will promote the blog, but it can be done.

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seospidy@Internet marketing

Now a days if we need progress in successful online business marketing then we need dedicated blog enrich with lots of post solving all Frequently Ask Question FAQ blog helps in building customer relationship management and list building for success internet marketing campaign.

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Kathy

I guess I don't think of a business blog in the same way as a lot of other people do. I would think that small businesses would use their blog to help build out the size of their corporate website so that they can rank for more keywords and develop more authority within their industry.

I don't think of a small business blog as something that will wither and die. I think of blogger blogs as such but not business blogs.

If I was advising a small business on how to handle their blog, I would tell them (and I have told them) to compose as many detailed articles as necessary to answer common questions they might not want to answer for a potential customer face to face.

The only real updates I would advise after that point would be to announce changes with the company, press releases and any other information that will help improve the image and corporate brand. Whatever frequency that stuff happens at is the proper frequency to post at. I don't think business blogs should be posted to just for the sake of posting unless it has been more than 6 months.

I guess I am all alone in that opinion.

If a business were to follow that approach, then their costs for implementing and maintaining a blog would be minimal and almost negligible.

I think there are better ways (like email for instance) for a brick and mortar business to communicate sales offers and other rapidly changing short term business news.

Tia Peterson

Hey Kathy,

You make valid points. I don't think a blog is a necessary tool for communicating company updates and such. Many businesses already have a newsletter in place which does that very well.

I would say that the point of a blog is for interaction, which is something a lot of companies say that they want. Your idea of putting together good articles that will help with ranking is perfect, and they can be scheduled at regular intervals and that way the blog will always be kept up to date.

But I have seen many, many small business blogs that haven't been updated for several years. The companies are still in business, but the blogs are dead because they didn't know what to do with it after awhile.

I see what you mean. I agree that there are numerous companies out there that have neglected their websites for years. I would say that they should make sure they are dateless so that it is not obvious to visitors that the information is really old.

It would be in their best interest to update at least once in a while. Even if there isn't any really high value content to put on there, they could just talk about the state of their industry, post a good testimonial or honor a dedicated employee publicly.

Right on. I removed dates from my blog awhile back. They still show up under archives, but even the archives can be customized to not show dates!

Cheers, Kathy

Samuel

I do spend time with my blog and at d same time, i do look for time lol....cos time is never enough! Umm.. If u dnt mind cn u borrow me part of time lol Nice post tia. Keep d gud work up.

Wayne Howard

Honestly, I think I probably spend too much time blogging. My site is still fairly new though so that probably accounts for why I'm on it so much. Always doing checking this, adjusting that, etc. I blog while I'm at work, blog when I get home. lol..

Sherryl Perry

Tia, It's so good to read that you too assign a value to your time. I do the same thing. It really helps me to judge if it's worth doing myself. I'm guilty of charging myself a discount rate though! :) Do you find yourself doing that too?

HAHA yes. :)

John Paul@Make Money Blogging

Nice post.. blogging gives you what you put in. If you work it hard every day, you will see results in time.

Blogging has proven itself, so you know the time put into blogging will pay out in the end.

Sandra

I had to find this out the hard way. I now only have a few, good paying ones. I also, have some static sites. These I can set and forget it. I am learning how to tweet and what is in it for me to make money. I hope that I do not get, too many irons in the fire again and have to reduce what I am doing again. They only way to know is to try so, I am trying everything that I can.

That's the best way to do it, Sandra. A little at a time so (1) you don't get overwhelmed and (2) you actually see a return on the investment.

Gera @ Sweets Foods Blog

I see often brands establishing blogs and you see their posts like pure pitch sales or completely not having a voice.
As life you need to get some kind of balance in all the blogger-tasks to get success - isn’t easy ;-)

In some cases outsourcing can be good option.

Have a great week!

Gera

Question for you Tia. I see you put Technorati tags on your posts, this ping them or improve the ranking with them? See it reflected on the stats? Here you've an idea for other post...

Thanks Gera

It puts a link to your blog on more pages throughout Technorati. On the Technorati tag pages, your blog will be listed as recent blogs with that tag. So, it is great for back links.

I don't know if it improves ranking with them since I don't track mine there, but I don't think so.

Understood. You can get back links… mmm delicious idea for traffic. I'll see the popular tags there according to the post and I'll do it when I've a chance. Thanks Tia!

Delicious idea indeeeeeeed. :) Especially if you use not so popular tags, as your post will stay on that page longer, increasing likelihood of the backlink getting crawled.

philadelphia movers

I am definitely not spending enough, but it is tough to find time!

It IS difficult. That's why you should judge it against your other marketing methods and always go with the ones that give you a better bang for your buck - but you must be sure that you measure total ROI and not just what is obvious, like the sale. Look through to the entire life cycle of the customer/client.

Laura Davis

Great suggestion! I can't say that I would have thought of assigning your own work an hourly rate, but that really is the smartest way to do it. Great idea!

Thanks, Laura. I started doing this a long time ago and I advise clients to do it, too. I read this book, Twitter Marketing in an Hour a Day. An hour a day is 20-25 hours per month give or take. Multiplying that by an hourly rate, you can see how much social media really does cost. And that's why it's good to have a plan in place for making the social media work for the bottom line of the business as well.