Are you killing your business blog with these mistakes?

Launching a new business blog but aren’t sure what you’re doing? Perhaps you thought you’d wing it but now you’re already out of ideas. You’re not alone, it happens to many new bloggers.

The good news is you can save your blog if you take a step back before you publish another post.

Maybe some quick fixes will help you, maybe they won’t.

Maybe you need to start again or tweak many things so that your blog can survive.

Whatever you do, do it soon before your blog fails.

Five reasons business blogs fail

Many business blogs fail because they’re launched out of desperation to boost traffic and ranking rather than to add value. But without knowing your issues, I’m unable give you a diagnosis and a specific solution.

However, what I can do is share some common reasons why many businesses fail at blogging.

1. They don’t have a clear plan.

Rule number one of business blogging is to follow a plan. Otherwise, you risk running out of content ideas quickly. People often think it’s going to be easy and that they’ll start a blog, write a post each week and keep going.

However, as soon as they start putting content together, they have no idea what to write about. Although they know their products and services well, they struggle to come up with content people will enjoy and find useful.

2. They don’t know how to research their topics.

How do you know what people want to read? You do intensive research.

About…? Well, successful business blogs are great at providing solutions that address their readers’ problems. They also plan their topics weeks or months ahead (e.g. 3, 6 or 12 months).

Businesses that fail at blogging often started without a plan. They also don’t have the skills to conduct in-depth research about their topics. They’re not familiar with keyword research tools, don’t know much about search engine optimisation or how to get their blog posts to show in search results.

Which also often means they’re not tracking trending keywords and topics to make sure their content respond to current problems.

3. They’re not aligning their blog with their marketing plan.

A blog strategy or plan is only part of the puzzle. It should sit within your marketing plan. This way, you’ll know which services or products you’re marketing when you’re writing your blog posts.

This also helps to align your blog with what you’re doing on social media, in your emails and in your offline marketing.

Those who don’t have a marketing plan but have some form of plan can focus on topics relevant to the business and that show readers what they have to offer.

4. They delegate the job to the wrong people.

Many businesses can’t afford to hire a permanent employee specifically to write their business blog posts. Someone with strong writing and research skills and who can come up with content ideas. These qualities determine whether a blog is a success.

Often it’s the owner who’s doing the writing. At other times, the sales person is asked to write content. It’s not always a good idea to pass the blog to the sales person if they’re not good storytellers. Because, let’s be honest, who wants to read a salesy blog post?

People want useful AND conversational content information that will solve their problems. The don’t want a sales pitch.

5. They don’t have the time to promote their posts.

As you’ve probably guessed, business blogging is very time consuming. But you must also make the time to promote your content if you want people to read it.

Yet, many businesses forget to add “Share to social media” to their lists of things to do once they press Publish. Or they share once via social media… and that’s it. That’s not good enough.

Remember, people are busy. And their social media feeds move fast. In fact, because of all the constant changes in how social media platforms deliver content to your communities, not everyone can see your posts.

So it’s important to share the same post several times (but without spamming your followers). If no one’s spotting your links, they’re not going to click through to your blog.

Need someone to help rescue your business blog? Call me on 0416 513 843 or shoot me an email and we’ll discuss the best solution for your blog.