Are You Too Busy to Blog?

There’s an interesting blogging conversation in the LinkedIn SEO Copywriting group. One woman said that she creates a monthly newsletter (which she posts to the site) instead of blogging. In her words, “I don’t have a separate blog; I’ve got enough to do.”

Tell an online marketer that you don’t blog and you’re liable to get a shocked response. “You don’t blog? Um, why not?” Blogging – what was once just a geek-chic thing to do – is now a major marketing mainstay. “Everyone” is doing it.

Are you sure that it’s a good idea that you aren’t?

Well, here are some things to think about…

It could be said that “no time to blog” isn’t a reasonable excuse. That’s because that blogging (and I’m talking quality blog posts here – not stuff you upload at the eleventh hour because you have to write something) drives traffic and helps establish you as an expert. I can look at my own analytics and tell you the days I’ve blogged and the days I haven’t just by looking at a graph. My traffic spikes during the “blog days” and falls during the “non-blog days.” For me, it would be stupid not to blog. I’m gaining too much traffic every time I do.

However, what works for me doesn’t work for everyone. And certainly, just because you do have a blog doesn’t mean that 1,000 people will flock to it every time you post.

If you had a blog and stopped posting, check your analytics and review your traffic. Were you getting more leads while you were blogging? Were you “meeting” more people on Twitter? If so, you have four choices:

• Suck it up and go back to blogging.
• Develop another content marketing plan that you can keep up with.
• Hire someone to blog for you.
• Ignore everything and lose leads to your oft-blogging competitors.

Harsh? Yes…but compassionately so. I get being “too busy” to blog. I face it every day. However, like my trainer says about exercise, “too busy” isn’t a reasonable excuse. What is an excuse is, “After reviewing our analytics and giving it a good shot, our company relies on other marketing touch points (a newsletter, a discussion group) to connect with customers and demonstrate our expertise.” It’s not so much that you “don’t have time to blog.” It’s that you’re spending your time participating in other, more lucrative marketing avenues.

For instance, the woman in the LinkedIn group isn’t ignoring her blog – she never had one in the first place. Instead, she has a different customer engagement strategy. Could she possibly drive more traffic if she did blog? Perhaps. But what she has is working for her right now.

At the same time, if blogging worked for your company – even as a short-term experiment – you owe it to your bottom line to manage your time better and provide your hungry readers the content they crave. Yes, that may mean planning your day a tad more efficiently. Or hiring someone to blog for you (sounds expensive – but really, it’s cheap compared to lost lead opportunities.) Or even taking a step back, working with a consultant on your blog marketing, and re-engaging.

The key is to figure out a way to keep your blogging bus rolling along.

What about you? Do you feel like you’re “too busy to blog?” How do you handle it?

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