Does Every Business Need A Blog?

Published November 16, 2021

.Over the course of the last almost 20 years, blogs have successfully made an evolution from being something that was once a hobby of writing nerds & enthusiasts, to being perceived as an essential component in a digital marketing vertical, and by most seasoned content marketers. I got into blogging almost 16 years ago—particularly, as a writing nerd that just needed something to do during his off time in boarding school. My first page was on Blogger—where I started talking about the ups, downs, and quirks of being a high schooler. Nobody read it, and nobody gave a shit, but I didn’t care: there has always been something about delivering written content in a progressive, journalistic format that has spoken to me.

Later projects would include a travel blog that documented my times in Europe and a college blog that discussed my collegiate exploits, followed by more serious projects such as a fashion blog with over 2,000 posts, a music blog with over 500, a design blog for a business that I had started with a friend, followed by another music blog—which failed primarily because I realized that I didn’t want to be a music journalist.

As I would practice blogging as part hobby and part trade, however, in a parallel universe the discipline was moving into a more serious space: What was once a mere contrivance of social sites such as MySpace, Zynga, and LiveJournal had metamorphosed into one of the innate desires of small businesses, personal brands, and multinational corporations. What would be easy—and natural—for me would be one of the earliest known black boxes of digital marketing that all marketers wanted to have, but few marketers actually knew how to use. All the same, my clients’ awareness of this black box’s existence—for a while—would color almost every consultation that I had.

“What do you think of blogging?”

“I’ve been thinking about starting a blog.”

“So, do you think we need a blog?”

Or, even worse, I have gotten “Where should I blog?”

“How do I blog?”

And yes, “What’s a blog?”

15 years ago, if you were asking these questions, I would have gladly answered them for you during a consultation. Today, if we are face to face, I’ll tell you that Google is your friend. The reality is that with most websites in this day and age being blogs, or powered by some kind of blogging component, there are countless examples today of what blogs are, and what you should be blogging about. Additionally, if you ask Google for information on where you should be blogging, you will be inundated with examples of CMS providers that will meet varying levels of need: Whether that is Wix, Squarespace, Webflow, Blogger, WordPress, or any of the other platforms which are available today that can provide a suite of CMS capabilities. But if you are wondering about what I think of blogging, as well as whether or not your business should do it, I might have some things to share—so let’s talk about that.

What I think of blogging

Most people that want to blog, but do not appreciate the amount of work that goes into blogging as an activity, usually are driven more so by a strong desire to realize whatever expectations they have from the blog itself. Thus, instead of actually focusing on the task of creating a good blog, both new bloggers and marketers alike tend to focus on what a blog can do for them, as opposed to what that it can do for the people expected to read it. Somewhere along the way, these very same images of success are driven by the garden-variety bullshit ideas that “blogging is easy,” “it doesn’t require much commitment,” or that “if you build it, they will come.”

Of course: people believe this bullshit, because bullshit like this actually had more than a mere semblance of credibility back in like, 2005. Today, however, the space is different: Blogging isn’t always easy, it is a commitment-intensive practice, and no, just because you build it, it doesn’t mean they will come—much less, care. And for as much as digital marketers, content strategists, and SEO consultants will try to twist the arms of clients and upper management to get them to devote resources to blogging, the reality is that it is one of the most resource-intensive practices that any marketing department can engage with: there is the time required for research, writing, editing—and if you want supporting media, images, audio, and sometimes video. Even worse, doing this all in house will result in a multiplicative increase in the complexity of your production workflow.

This isn’t to say that blogging can’t be enormously valuable, and it also isn’t to say that you shouldn’t do it. If done correctly, blogging can be an incredible wealth of search-engine traffic from passersby discovering you online. It can also be a great way to chronicle your team’s best ideas so that potential customers and clients can get a sense of your company philosophy, how you think, as well as your process. Furthermore, it can be a way to position your business as an authority in a particular industry, niche or space. But it can also be more than a masturbatory source of self-aggrandizing company news—which is what most corporate blogs are. They can be valuable as a source of news to keep your customers informed, or entertainment to keep them engaged. Finally, there are always the joys associated with teaching people new things.

Nonetheless, however, blogs should be started deliberately—and primarily because one has to appreciate the amount of work associated with making one successful before it is anywhere near being remotely capable of creating new business. Many marketers do not understand this, and make the mistake of thinking that by them “Getting a blog started” and “creating content” that they are doing all that is necessary for content marketing to functionally “work.” So, when their efforts do not correspond to much success from content marketing—or even just blogging—some are quick to discredit the practice as a whole, without ever considering that maybe they aren’t doing enough… or simply just suck at the practice. At the end of the day, marketers are results-oriented creatures. While advertising can be quickly rewarding, content marketing is thankless, and for such reasons requires a much higher level of commitment, and consistency, before any business can reap rewards from the practice.

Does Your Business Need A Blog?

I think that part of answering this question involves asking another question: before we can demonstrably decide if blogging is right for your business model, we need to first establish if blogging is right for every business model.

There was a time when most digital marketers would agree that it was, and that—for one reason or another—your business needed to start doing it. And while there was a time when clients would actively take this advice, such a perspective consistently ignores the fact that blogging is not something that can be easily conformed to every business model. While some may think that in an ideal world, every in-house marketer would be able to just “generate content from a laptop,” that is simply not the world we live in—and not by a long shot. Any assortment of pitfalls could prevent a business from being effective at its own marketing—from funding to staffing, to skills or availability of time. The reality is that businesses exist in a world where sometimes employees have to do work outside of their job description, where not every business owner has the literary chops to “run a blog,” and where sometimes the nature of the business itself doesn’t produce time for blogging as a marketing practice.

So, does your business need a blog? At this point, you may be able to guess that my answer quite simply is that, “It depends.” Consider for a moment, that coming to a concrete conclusion as to whether or not this is appropriate for you requires asking a series of internal questions:

• Do you operate in a space where people require regular updates of information? Quite simply, not every business is one that requires regular informational updates. Some places sell the same thing for years without offering many differences, or new additions, to what is offered other than the original product. All the same, some business models are simply just not that complicated, and are not affected by the existence of regular informational updates. Businesses that traditionally come to mind in this category would be restaurants, trade services such as plumbers and electricians, as well as industrial service providers such as landscapers, brick masons, and stone quarries.

• Does the space that you operate in provide the appropriate environment for creating written content? This is a big one, and what I mean by this is that you should not expect to execute a content strategy around resources and tools that you have to go out of your way to interact with. If you are a contractor working on a job site, then the probability that you will have enough time to sit down and pump out a written piece on WordPress—of all fucking places—will be nil. All the same, if you run a basketball coaching business, you may not have the time—or even available tools—to sit down and regularly execute an editorial plan with a blog at the center of your content strategy. Ultimately, the point I am trying to make is that your approach to content should try and meet you where you are, as that will increase the propensity of you continuing to execute it.

• Do the customers in your industry even have a preference for written content? Or put another way, are you addressing a demographic of people that like to read? Here’s the thing: as time goes on, fewer and fewer people enjoy reading shit. It is just the sad truth, but it is what it is. That is not to say that there still aren’t spaces where reading is popular, but if you aren’t even able to acknowledge that the other part of content marketing is understanding your target market’s willingness to consume it, then you very well could be doing something that is not actually serving your marketing agenda.

• And is written content even the most effective way of transmitting value to them? This is slightly different from having a preference in content, and what I mean is that sometimes there are better ways of presenting something than going strictly to the written word. For instance, in activities that are demonstration-intensive—such as fitness—sometimes it is better to turn to the devices of video before it is a good idea to conscript one’s efforts to writing a blog post. At the end of the day, your choice in content medium should be reflective of what is the most efficient means of presenting value to your base. Forcing people to read something where they may be served better by watching something just pisses people off. Inversely, forcing people to watch something when they may be better served by reading something runs the risk of not having enough informational depth.

Ultimately, the factors determining whether or not you should start a blog are going to be related to whether or not your business—and it’s base of customers—are contoured to properly leverage written content.

If we are being honest, not every industry does this equally—and to go a step further, this will always be the case. But that doesn’t mean the intrinsic value that a blog brings to one business, cannot be brought to another business via social. And what I am saying is that for as much as we have framed blogging around the idea of running confederated websites that host WordPress, Wix, or any other CMS platform, the concept of blogging still resides at the center of certain social media platforms. Therefore, while having a blog on your website may not be the best means of promoting your business, you can still use services that are built on the philosophy of blogging to further enhance your marketing operations. Instagram allows users to photoblog, YouTube allows users to video blog, and Twitter allows users to microblog. These are all things that can be utilized by businesses in lieu of traditional blogging platforms to have a lighter weight—but still efficacious—presence that can more flexibly interact with the demands of your business, and reduce the headache associated with overly-complex platforms.

Conclusion

While blogging has its merits as a way of generating SEO-related traffic for business webpages, I think it is imperative for marketers to be careful about over-emphasizing its importance as an owned marketing channel. The truth of the matter is that for as much as blogging can be a healthy source of traffic—if you stick with it—the resource-intensive nature of blogging can interfere with the central business functions that actually predicate its existence. Generally, I think it is wise for business owners to be vigilant about keeping this in the front of their minds: it’s not about whether or not you have a blog, it is about whether or not you are capable of creating content that serves your customers. Sometimes that content will be found on a blog, but sometimes it will not—and it is ok if something else quite simply works better.

So, does every business need a blog? No. As successful brands without one prove that digital marketing does not have to live and die with SEO, there is evidence to suggest that the rules have changed. While maybe 10 or 15 years ago, digital marketers may have suggested that every business start a one, over the years our greater sensibilities have kicked in and made us come to a realization: not everybody is a blogger, and the universal success of blogging’s alternatives have made this completely fine.

At the end of the day, developing consistent, quality, content is a perpetual and never-ending process of testing one’s commitment to the task. Regardless of whether you decide to blog, post pictures, start a YouTube series or micro-blog, these decisions should be the product of what you feel confident that you can to commit to. While I cannot see your brand, and for such reasons, cannot definitively say if your brand needs to have a blog, my primary hope is that you can take my words, look at your agenda, and ultimately come to this answer for yourself.