The Blog Brawl: 10 Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Enter the Blogosphere

Written by Blake on . Posted in Create Your Dream

I’m going to spend hours coming up with content. I don’t have the time or patience for a blog. Blogs won’t generate revenue. Blogging is for new, techy companies. Sound familiar?   There are a million reasons as to why startups and established businesses shy away from entering the blogosphere. But in all honesty, the entrepreneurs, small business owners, and CEOs who tell themselves that blogs aren’t worth it couldn’t be more wrong.

Blogs allow for relevant, newsworthy and interesting content to be displayed on your site. Blogs increase the traffic to your website and help you to interact with your readers, clients and customers. Those who are not utilizing blogs are simply afraid that they take too much time. Or maybe they’ve tried blogging before and were left with negative results.
  

There are ten questions that you must ask yourself before entering the blogosphere. After you’ve answered these ten questions, you’ll be well on your way to a positive blogging experience.

 

1. Why are you blogging?

You can blog to build a brand, generate leads, generate direct sales, or generate advertising revenue. Or you can blog simply to keep your customers and clients in-the-know. So why are you going to blog?

2. What will you blog’s theme be?
 

Once you’ve determined why you’re blogging, it will be easier to focus on what you will blog about. Your writing can be niche-focused or broad, informative or entertaining, professional or easy-going. Develop the voice and theme that works for you and for your business’s image.


3. What will your topics be?

Your topics should stay in line with your blog’s overall theme. When answering this question, you also need to take into account the frequency of your blog posts, what the actual content will look like, the organization of the blog, and the blog’s call to action.


4. What will the blog look like?

Designing your blog is extremely important. The blog’s design can reinforce your business’s brand in an extremely memorable way. You can utilize pre-designed templates or hire out a custom template.


5. Where will your blog be located?

Your blog can be under the same domain name of your site, which is extremely beneficial because it allows for better search engine optimization. This strategy adds all of your blog content to your site content when search engines determine where to place you in your rankings. If this strategy isn’t for you, you can utilize software such as Blogger or WordPress in order to start an effective blog.


6. Who will manage the blog?

You need to decide whether you want to hire a blogger or a writer or if you are going to manage the blog yourself. Are you going to allow guest bloggers? Can people within the organization write up a few blogs each month?


7. What features will your blog have?

One of the best parts of a blog is beefing it up with cool features. Polls, surveys, blog stats, social media links, comments, countdowns, and a list of the most popular blogs are great gadgets to display on your blog’s site.

8. How will you advertise your blog?

How are you going to get your blog noticed by your target market? Try to get new readers and build loyalty amongst existing readers by blasting your blog out on Twitter, your Facebook page, or simply by word-of-mouth.


9. Are you going to remember to check out your stats?

The only way to know if a blog is doing its job is to analyze its stats every week. Make it a point to see how many readers you’re drawing in, what the most popular blog posts are, and what keywords are used to find your blog. Most blog tools such as Blogger and WordPress allow for these capabilities.


10. Will you monetize your blog?

It is crucial that you monetize your blog. Here are some options for monetizing your blog effectively:

  • Support an online store such as Zappos
  • Sell products and services through your blog
  • Sell products for other affiliates on your blog
  • Sell advertising opportunities
  • Utilize pay per post
  • Write for other publications or make media appearances

Don’t get in a blog brawl. Answer these ten questions before you enter the blogosphere!