6 Reasons Why Most Business Blogs Fail

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The importance of blogging in the success of the business is irrefutable. According to Hubspot, marketers who have prioritized blogging are 13 times more likely to enjoy positive ROI and 79% of the companies that have a blog achieve a positive ROI for inbound marketing. Businesses also notice other subtle benefits of blogging, be it helping them building a brand or establishing their company as a market leader in addition to increasing the customer base and thus improving sales. While the reported success is impressive, more often than not business blogs fail to meet the expectation. Here are the 6 most common and critically important reasons business blogs fail:

1. Lack of Resource

One of the key reasons for a business blog to fail is the lack of resource and skills. While it’s obvious that companies have great knowledge in their field but it’s also evident that most of the companies fail to keep their blog alive either due to lack of skills for writing a good business blog or due to the lack of resources. Often companies devote their resources to more pressing issues that require immediate attention and blogs are often neglected. According to a B2B marketing professionals survey by TechValidate, most of the marketers found that time allocation and lack of expertise are the major challenges in creating content. Businesses can overcome the challenges of content marketing by:

· Outsourcing to a professional content writer

· Outsourcing to a content marketing agency

· Allocating the necessary dedicated resources (internal and external)

2. Lack of Content Strategy

One of the most common mistakes of a business blog after not realizing the potential of the blog is to realize the potential and jump into business blogging hurriedly. Blogging is a hard work that requires a lot of strategic planning and dedication. Companies need a clear roadmap that identifies the target audience whom the blog is trying to reach, the message blog is trying to pass on and the achievements blog is expected to unlock. The blogging strategy needs to clearly identify goals, objectives, and matrices without which it’s almost impossible to know how well the content marketing is performing. For their content marketing/blogging strategy Businesses should consider:

· Creating a blogging plan/strategy and linking it to a documented content marketing strategy

· Setting clear goals and objective for the blogs

· Identifying KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)

3. Lack of continuity

According to a recent statistic, while 77% businesses have blogs, 85% of them have less than five blog posts. Companies realize the importance of having a blog but often fail to keep it updated. 70% of the business owners express lack of bandwidth as the cause of the failure in small business blogging. While the consistent and regular content creation is the most important factor in the successful blogging, it’s also understandable that writing can be hard if the businesses don’t have skills and resources. Lack of regular updates fails to attract target audience and thus fails to achieve marketing and sales goals. Companies can introduce continuity in their blogs by:

· Setting up a content calendar with frequency and schedule for a blog post

· Defining the ownership of the content/blog posts

· Creating a repository of the contents to be used

4. Lack of substance and quality

The most difficult challenge to overcome on the blog is to grab consumer attention. Blog content has to be valuable enough for the audience to spend time on it and share it. Poor quality content not only drives the audience away but it also damages companies’ reputation. Mostly when blogging is done in-house, it lacks substance since the resource allocation is often poor and the individual handling blog doesn’t have much time or bandwidth to give proper justice to the blog. Often times business blogs have interesting topics but due to lack of resource, they fall short of delivering substantial knowledge and interesting insight to the audience. The quality can be maintained by:

· Proper research and study

· Aiming for quality over quantity

· Having a professional editor/proofreader

5. Lack of Feedback

The main difference between a blog and a website is the communication channel that blog provides. companies often have one-way communication channels, be it their website or other advertising media. Unless customer reaches out to companies on the specified platform, there is no channel where the discussion happens. The blog provides the channel to engage with the customer. Readers can comment and leave feedback on the blog post. The goal of a blog post is to create the conversation between a company and its customer. A blog is a place where communities are formed when there is an ongoing conversation. Often companies block the negative comments or feedback instead of engaging with them. Another feedback tool is web analytics which includes RSS feed analytics, on-site search, social media monitoring, inbound links, etc. This kind of feedback provides the insight into the effectiveness of content marketing strategy. Companies can increase feedback by:

· Encouraging comments and responding to almost every comment

· Asking questions, initiating discussion

· Creating the content that generates reactions, discussions

6. Lack of knowledge of the audience

It is very important for a company to understand their customers. A blog would never produce expected results if it’s not serving its target audience or if it’s not reaching to them even if the content is really good. A blog should not be constrained to only press releases and company news. A good blog focuses on educating, informing and engaging the prospects and customers with the content that is valuable to them. The aim of the blog should be educating, helping and guiding the customers at every stage of the life-cycle. Companies can better understand the audience by:

· Developing and categorizing the buying personas

· Studying the audiences’ behavior

· Reaching out to the customer, asking questions, resolving issues and concerns

As mentioned in the beginning, the importance of blogging is indisputable. However, a company should blog with a sound and committed strategy. Whether it’s done in-house or outsourced, when executed properly, blogging can be a powerful tool for companies in reaching out their target audience. A well-planned, well written and ongoing blog that avoids the common mistakes listed here can grow customer base and increase sales beyond expectations.