CT Biz Blogs

Darren Rowse, on ProBlogger Blog Tips, has started an excellent series of articles on Maintaining Momentum in Blogging.

One of the causes he mentions is busyness — when you start to have too much to do, it’s easy to let blogging drop to the bottom of the list.

That’s when having a plan comes in handy. A blog plan starts like any other plan, with your goals. It’s not good to say “blogging is popular today, so I need a blog.” You have to decide what you want from a blog, what a blog can do for you, and what you’re willing to do in order to achieve those goals.

If you want a blog, but you’re unable to work on it, then you’ll need to get someone to help you. If you get swamped with other tasks and you need to spend time away from your blog, you need to have a plan for that. If your plan is to not post, then you need to be OK with that.

And I actually think it is OK to not post — at least not post on a daily basis, if that fits your plan. However, if you don’t post for weeks at a time, that’s not good. Most people don’t use RSS and don’t subscribe to blogs via email. They just rely on their memory, links from other sites, or bookmarks, to visit a site. If nothing changes for weeks, chances are they won’t visit often, and will miss something when you do finally add a post.

Not all blogs are “pro” blogs, where the goal is to have an blog producing income from the ads. (Not that there’s anything wrong with those types of blogs — good pro bloggers know the way to success is to produce valuable content — Darren himself is an excellent example of that.) Some blogs are used more indirectly — to demonstrate expertise, to share knowledge, to connect with like-minded folks, to build relationships with clients or customers, or to make your business more “findable”. All those will help build business.

If you’re blogging to acquire readers who you hope will eventually convert to clients, or to people you wish to network with, then you need to keep up some momentum.

Check out Darren’s series for tips on that.