Chadrack
With the increased popularity of blogs, many small business entrepreneurs now use this powerful tool for promoting their businesses on the net. Even off-line business entrepreneurs are not left out as many of them now use blogs to build a following online for their offline businesses.
Unfortunately, many of these entrepreneurs are new to blogging and do not know how to effectively use small business blog marketing. As a result of this many of them end up without any appreciable results. In this article I want to highlight 3 of the top reasons why many small business entrepreneurs fail with their business marketing blogs and also offer some tips on how to overcome them.
But First, What Really Is Business Blog Marketing?
I'm sure you'll agree with me that not all who blog about making money blogging really know the different ways of making money online with a blog. But it's simply the truth! There are actually 2 broad ways of making money with blogs. These are (1) as a pro-blogger (taking blogging as a profession where the blog is your primary means of income) and (2) as a business blogger, using your blog as a tool in promoting your business on the net.
So business blog marketing is actually a marketing strategy that consists of blogging about your business in order to build up a follower-ship that will ultimately become customers and clients.
This marketing strategy has been proven to be effective for getting your business out there for increased popularity.
Of course it's this effectiveness of blogs in promoting your business on the net that has moved many entrepreneurs into starting their own small business blogs.
Unfortunately, blogging generally requires a lot of work! Gaining a large readership for your business blog requires much of your attention and a big dose of patience. And this is where many entrepreneur bloggers give up their dreams because many of them started with the wrong notion that making money online does not involve much work!
But that indeed is a wrong notion. Any experienced blogger knows that coming up with ideas and creating content to update a blog on a regular basis takes not only time but brain power! And without this constant updating you don't expect your blog readers to keep coming back for more.
3 Reasons for Small Business Blog Marketing Failure and Their Remedies
1. Lack of Time for Updating the Business Blog:
As mentioned above, business blog marketing is a busy affair and may take you away from other business chores. Many entrepreneurs never consider this before adding a blog to their business website. Even off-line business entrepreneurs who start a business blog with the mind of getting more clients online rarely think of this. When however, they soon realize that much of the time devoted to creating content, updating the blog and interacting with blog readers could actually be used for attending other aspects of the business many soon abandon the blog.
Of course there are a few ways to overcome this problem. But, I'll suggest just one here and that is, hire some help!
I think this is very important especially if you're a service business entrepreneur. Your time is valuable and therefore you cannot afford to devote all of your time to updating a blog while the day to day running of your business suffers.
There are different options online on how you can get a constant flow of blog content created for you. It may interest you to know that I offer professional SEO web content writing service dedicated to helping you get high search rankings for improved brand visibility and increased website traffic. You can hire my services to create your content for you. Besides, you can also post a project here and allow freelance bloggers bid on your work.
Taking this approach will greatly increase the effectiveness of your small business blog marketing. You’ll have more time to attend to your existing clients/customers and also be able to reach out to more prospects thereby enlarging your market reach!
2. Challenges of Not Being a Writer:
This is another problem that faces many business entrepreneurs who wants to market their business online with a blog. Successful blogging is really about constantly writing good content. Without good content, no one will want to come back to your business blog after their first visit. Besides, good content will help your business blog to rank high on the search engines which is good for your marketing. So good content is indeed key to the success of your business blog marketing.
But not many business entrepreneurs are good writers! Though many of these ones have ideas of what to write about yet they lack the ability to package these ideas to really market their business. You must understand that this is crucial because when people visit your business blog their impression about you and your business will be determined by the content you put on the blog. Just writing anything and posting to your business blog could actually hurt the performance of the blog. it is therefore important that you find some ways of getting good content created for you.
Our suggestion above can also be used to overcome this problem, that is, hiring some help. And if you're looking to get customized professional service then it's important you check out my professional SEO web content writing service.
Of course, thousands of content writers abound on the net that will be willing to help you for a token fee. It doesn't matter your budget, there is just a writer that fits your budget. Find examples of what others are doing here.
3. Lack of Basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Knowledge:
How many off-line business entrepreneurs really know anything about Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? What about the small business entrepreneurs marketing online, how many of them know how to effectively use SEO strategies to rank their business websites and blogs?
It may be true that one of the reasons for using a business blog is the SEO advantage of blogs but with the competition today much needs to be done for a blog to rank high on the search engines. This is where basic SEO tactics comes in.
Now, I don't advocate leaving your search engine optimization in the hands of someone else no matter experienced that person may be. Besides, many of the firms offering search engine optimization services on the net cost an arm and a foot. But there is a better route you can go that is, studying everything you can find on SEO.
Frankly, this will help you immensely but cost you less! You can actually get good resources from Amazon.com at a cost that will surprise you. For example the Search Engine Optimization For Dummies is such a good SEO resource you can get from Amazon.com.
So instead of paying through the nose to get some seo expert to handle your business blog seo needs, you can, with just a few dollars, get the knowledge you need. The good thing is that this knowledge can be used in other ventures later on. You must realize that using SEO will help you succeed with your small business blog marketing to the fullest extent possible as optimizing your blog posts will get you results that you will love. So do not overlook SEO when building your small business blog.
Conclusion: Small business blog marketing can really be done by anyone if these issues are handled well. The benefits of business blog marketing to entrepreneurs on the net should motivate entrepreneurs to overlook the great work involved and incorporate it into their marketing mix right away.
Over to you: What other factors do you think are responsible for entrepreneurs failing with small business blog marketing? Share your thoughts in the comment below.
But is there anything else that you should be doing for your business when you start out?.If you ask me you should also be blogging..New freelancers often ask how soon they should start blogging. While some experts believe that a freelancer should wait until their business is fairly well established before they set up a business blog in my opinion you should set up a blog for your business as soon as you can..Blogging is a relatively low cost activity that will add value to your business for a long time to come and in many cases blogging alone can push your business from obscurity to prosperity..Read on for an overview of what you should be doing with your freelance blog five ways that a blog can help your business and a few brief recommendations on how to get started.. .There are many ways that blogging can help you build up your freelancing business quickly.
Frankly, blogging can really add value to your business when done right. That is why every online entrepreneur should add a blog to his/her blog.
I think that you are right Chadrack, IN MOST CASES. Sometimes I feel that for certian businesses, time and money could be much better spend on something else though…
“That is why every online entrepreneur should add a blog to his/her blog.” – Do you mean “That is why every online entrepreneur should add a blog to his/her business.”???
..The blogging movement is picking up speed as businesses begin to realize the benefits of blogging. Discover what a business blog can do for you…What is a Blog?..According to Pyra Labs Blogger A blog is a web page made up of usually short frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically-like a whats new page or a journal. The term is actually weblogs coined by Jorn Barger in 1997…The boom of weblogs happened in 1999 when several companies developers made easy blogging software and tools.
I’d love for you to guest blog gems like this for me, it is after all exactly what I teach. 😉
Hmm, love to do that. Let’s see what we can do about it.
Thanks for the kind words. Truly appreciated!
Judging from a few of the links in this article, I’m thinking that one of the biggest pieces of advice here is to “hire some help!” =)
Honestly, there’s so much that a business owner has to do, sometimes outsourcing is just the only way that makes sense. Especially when talking about things like SEO, social media, all those things that take time to learn, time to implement, time to maintain…time, time, and more time!
There are only 24 hours in a day.
And if you can’t outsource, sometimes you just have to back up on other things and devote half an hour a day to learning those things. It might mean going a little bit more slowly than you want, but if it’s either going to cost money or cost time, and you’re short on one, then you just might have to pay with the other. =)
Delena
You’re definitely right Delena. You know most of us IMers takes some of these things for granted having worked with them for sometime now.
But for any one thinking of running a business (especially a service business) and thinks he/she can do all these things without help is simply courting trouble.
“There are only 24 hours in a day.” Oh how very true that is Delena! You must get enough done in the time you are given, use your time productively and get the right work/life balance!
I thought I would reply to both of you here. I’m fond of something that Robert Kiyosaki says all the time: when starting a business, you have to be prepared to work very hard for free.
This means a lot of time, and sometimes money, for no payout. At least, not at first. It means working in your spare time, and working hard. But the short term sacrifice is always worth the long term reward if you’ve worked smartly.
Delena
Very true Delena…
Thanks for that 🙂
These were the first which I had.. Then I progressed as a blogger and now a decent Entrepreneur..
It’s actually a thing of joy to look back and discover that in the midst of all the challenges you were able to scale through! I wish you all the best.
Hi Chadrack,
Congrats, you’ve made it into the “Blogging Quotes To Live By” section over at Bloggers Market.
I know if I find something of use for this section of my Blog that the writer or Blog owner is doing a great job in his or her niche.
Hi Jeffrey, just want to say thanks for including a quote from this post on your blog’s quote section. Truly appreciate it.
I think that you have to consider the long-term financial benefits of blogging. It normally takes 3 years before noticeable returns are realized. It’s a bit like making small regular deposits into a bank savings account.
The sooner that you start creating quality daily posts, just like financial savings, the larger the benefits will be in 3 years, 5 years and 10 years.
Search engine rankings naturally improve with age and the more exposure a post has (in weeks, months and years), the more exposed it becomes for unique visitors to be attracted to the post.
@ Russell, you are definitely correct there that blogging takes time to bring in the financial gains. But, think of it, how many business persons wants to wait that long before they see the benefits? That’s why the tips in the post are there for anyone who wants to use blogs for promoting their business online. Thanks for joining the conversation.
Hi Chadrack,
Thanks for your reply.
It normally takes a minimum of 2 years for a bricks ‘n mortar business to start breaking even. By this, I mean a new shoe shop, restaurant, or design bureau.
These businesses have a reasonable start-up cost of (say) $10,000 to $50,000 and the running costs are high. Additionally, the competition is fierce, but there are barriers to entrance in these markets.
Let’s compare this to affiliate marketing using the internet.
The start-up costs and running costs are almost zero, i.e. less than a few hundred dollars. Consequently, there are no barriers to entry and competition is as high as anyone can imagine.
So, if break-even for a bricks ‘n mortar company is more than 2 years with high start-up costs then we shouldn’t complain if internet marketing takes longer before any real income is realized.
If affiliate marketing did start to provide a reasonable income to more than (say) 50,000 people worldwide then the existing incomes of affiliate marketers would be further reduced.
The number of internet affiliate marketers increases every second in Africa, China and India and, yet, the money spent by the advertisers remains the same.
So, it’s obvious what the result will be for 99.99% of existing internet affiliate marketers within the next 3 years. Less income.
@ Russell, must say this is well laid out analysis of the topic at hand! I quite agree with every bit of your point. This is why I said in the post,
“Unfortunately, blogging generally requires a lot of work! Gaining a large readership for your business blog requires much of your attention and a big dose of patience. And this is where many entrepreneur bloggers give up their dreams because many of them started with the wrong notion that making money online does not involve much work.”
If those who wants to start a business on the net understand most of what you’ve just said, then they would know that what they need most is persistence and a big dose of patience.
I’ve just read this a few minutes ago,
“Success is out there for those who get up each morning and make a conscious effort to move towards it. Work hard for it, everyday. Think about it everyday. Want and desire it more than anything else. Remember, successful people didn’t get that way by accident. They made the necessary changes in their life, and worked hard for it everyday.”
I think all success-minded people know the importance of persistence which of course comes from knowing that everything worthwhile in life takes time to build.
Thanks really great for the insight.
With small businesses having offline businesses I think the most effective form of marketing online will be through social media.. This does not mean that having a business blog should be scrap out all together.. But instead both of these should go hand in hand..
You’re definitely correct Lynn, social media may be somehow much easier for offline businesses. But do not forget that social media also has its technicalities need to be mastered. Frankly, I suggest having a blog and using it in conjuction with social media marketing. I love having control over my content anyway!
I think blogging demands passion to get success.Only a experienced person can get success in business blog marketing.If you r only behind for money then its not easy and It won’t happen overnight…
Indeed passion is neccessary for blogging success but you know that passion must be coupled with some expertise on your area of focus. This is why I think business owners should really use blogs for marketing and promotion. If you’re alreading running a business you definitely have both of these qualities. You couldn’t be running a business without some measure of passion and expertise, so blogs are really great tools for business owners if they know what to do.
Good point Lynn…
with facebook and twitter alone, most people can network faster through these outlets. Adding to the equation a business blog makes it SEEM like you’re “cool” or “hip”. People like cool, and hip. Keep it current! that’s what I always say 🙂
Hi Jasmine, just want to say you may want to read my reply to Lynn. Well you said adding a business blog to the equation makes it seem “cool” or “hip” but I don’t think so. I think using a blog, like a self hosted wordpress blog, gives you more control over your content.
To reach small business owners in the world of internet marketing blogging paying a important roll .Because they utilized there advertise and promote the market products in the platform of advertising .Small business blogging is a internet opportunity to the targeted audience