5 Reasons You Should NOT Have a Blog For Your Business
It was one of my favorite DM’s that I ever received.
After doing an Instagram story series about how to write emails that people actually want to read, I received a message that I haven’t quit thinking about or referring to.
“I’m suuupppeerrrr struggling with what the heck to write about… do you legit mean that ALL businesses should be blogging and emailing?”
I love this question so much because it shows that she was listening to what I was saying and instead of thinking, “ehhh, that doesn’t really apply to my business” she paused and intentionally considered what it COULD look like for her business.
I love when people do this because it shows that they have an open mind and are willing to try new things IF they understand it.
Because of this DM, I was able to ask her a few more questions about her business specifically and really help her determine if a blog made sense for her.
While I fully believe in the power of blogs and could easily say, “yep, EVERYONE needs a blog” that wouldn’t really be helpful for you.
Depending on your goals and strategy, it actually may NOT be a good fit or the right time.
So, instead of spitting more reasons your way about why you should have a blog in your business and telling you more facts about why blogs are important, I’m actually going to share 5 Reasons You Should NOT Start a Blog For Your Business.
5 Reasons You Should NOT Have a Blog For Your Business.
If you’re not willing to strategically promote your blogs after publishing.
I never want you to believe that simply posting blogs is the magical answer for more traffic to your website.
Are blogs one of the best ways to boost SEO? You bet! But that doesn’t mean that you get to click “publish” and not do your part.
I believe that blogs are for WAYYYYY more than just SEO (here’s my tangent on that) and if you’re going to have a blog in your business, it should be a core part of your content strategy, which means everything else that you do in your business should flow from your blogs.
I mean think about it: what’s the point in writing and publishing a blog post if you’re not going to TELL your people about it?
Writing and posting your blog post is only one piece of the puzzle! The other piece is intentionally and strategically driving your audience to your blog to receive the ultimate value that you have to offer and usually this is done through social media and your emails.
The way I like to describe this is that your social media content is like a Costco sample that gives people just a little taste of the topic at hand and it drives them to your blog which is like a Golden Corral buffet - giving them the full meal and all of the takeaways.
If you’re not willing to take the time to create content that will encourage your audience to go read your blogs, it may not be a good fit, because at the end of the day you would be investing your time into blog posts and then just putting your readership odds into the hands of the Internet.
Yes, there’s a chance your blog will populate and strangers might find you from a Google search, but choosing not to capitalize on who you ALREADY have (your current audience) is a big mistake in my book.
If you can’t commit to the consistency that blogs require.
As cliche as it might sound, consistency really is key when it comes to blogs in your business. Being consistent with your blog posts does a few things:
1. First and foremost, it allows your audience to know what to expect from you.
Humans naturally want to know what to expect and when you commit to a consistency that you don’t waiver from, you establish a level of trust with your audience that keeps them coming back for more.
This consistency subconsciously assures someone that you do what you say you’re going to do and that alone can continue to serve you and even turn your followers into real leads and customers in the future.
For example, my audience knows that every single Wednesday they can find a new blog post on my website and the reason they know that is because it’s what I’ve consistently done.
On Wednesday’s my social posts and Instagram stories are all about the blog post that week and the content drives them to the post (just like I mentioned in reason #1).
They know they might not see me on social media everyday (because social media isn't the backbone of my business), but they KNOW a new blog is coming every single week!
2. Next, it allows you to build your content bank much faster.
One of the greatest benefits of having a blog for your business is that it allows you to have a massive content bank that you OWN and can refer to for years to come.
On the flip side of that, if you only post your best content on social media, you’re taking the risk of it getting lost in the black hole of the internet that you’ll be lucky to ever find again or it getting deleted altogether (because Instagram is unpredictable, let’s be honest).
The more consistent you are with your blog posts, the faster you’ll build your content bank that you can direct your audience to at any time and allow them to find the content that they specifically need.
3. Finally, consistent blogging can boost your SEO rankings.
Again, I don’t believe that SEO is everything, but it IS something. Google loves websites that are frequently updated, so every time you publish a new blog, that’s considered an “update” in the eyes of the Internet.
Here’s a short version of how this works: every time you post a blog, a new URL is created on your website. That URL is then “crawled” and ranked on a search engine (Google). The more pages your website has, the more it gets crawled for relevancy and your odds of greater SEO gets boosted.
The cool part is that YOU get to decide what your blog consistency looks like.
Some people post 1x/week or even 3x/week, while others only post 1-2/month.
It’s completely up to what works for you and your business, but if you can’t commit to some sort of consistency, it may not be the right time to start a blog for your business.
If you aren’t willing to make blogs a core part of your overall strategy.
I’ve already talked about this a little bit previously, but I want to spend some more time here because this strategy piece is what I often see people missing.
Here’s what tends to happen and maybe you can relate: you want to grow your business and generate leads, so you decide that social media is going to be the way you do it.
So, each week you spend a TON of your time creating viral worthy social media content and having a huge social media presence. You post everyday, show up on stories everyday and people really seem to love it.
The only problem with this is that all of the social media content that you spend hours creating only has a shelf life of 48 hours or less. Which means after the initial engagement, your account will likely go back to crickets… until you post the next thing.
Now, I’m not saying having a social media presence is bad. I’m simply saying don’t put all of your eggs into a social media basket.
My encouragement to you is to let blogs be a core part of your overall content strategy and start with them FIRST. From there, let what you do on social media and other channels flow from the blog itself.
When you do this, you’ll likely find that your social posts feel much more natural and less time consuming to create because you know EXACTLY what you want to convey.
If you’re not willing to make your blog a core part of your strategy right now, it might be best to hold off until you’re ready to shift this!
If you think that simply publishing blog posts will make you rank on page one of Google.
I’ll say it again: simply publishing blog posts isn't the magic pill to ranking higher on Google.
Can they help you get there? Absolutely! But believing that simply pressing “publish” is going to be the thing that gets you to page one of Google is going to leave you highly disappointed.
There’s a lot of backend work that goes into proper optimization to boost SEO rankings and because I’ve never claimed to be an SEO queen, I’m going to direct you to the people that I prefer to learn from for this: The Duo Collective.
If being on page one of Google is your only concern, a blog might not be the best fit for you!
If you’re only posting blogs for SEO purposes.
Lastly, if you’re ONLY blogging for SEO purposes, I want to stop you right there.
A huge misconception is that you can keyword your way to the top of Google, but what people sometimes don’t realize is that Google prioritizes useful and helpful content.
This means that if you’re keyword stuffing your blogs for SEO only, 1) your audience will be able to tell and be disengaged and 2) Google will also be able to tell and it can actually hurt your rankings.
So, if you’re only writing about topics that have high search volume VERSUS topics that are actually unique and helpful for your audience, it’s a huge mistake.
This is why as a blog writer, I take an audience first approach and help my clients create blog topics based on what their audience truly want and need.
After that, SEO can be applied in a way that yes might boost rankings, but more than anything it checks that “useful and helpful” box, which is what I’m much more concerned about!
Anyone can regurgitate information that’s already out there (including robots like ChatGPT), but only YOU can deliver value that’s unique to your audience.
If you aren’t viewing your blog content like this, I’d encourage you to hold off until you can!
And there ya have it - my long answer to, “does everyone REALLY need a blog in their business?”
Short answer: nope! As a recap, here are the 5 reasons you should NOT have a blog for your business:
If you’re not willing to strategically promote your blogs after publishing.
If you can’t commit to the consistency that blogs require.
If you aren’t willing to make blogs a core part of your overall strategy.
If you think that simply publishing blog posts will make you rank on page one of Google.
If you’re only posting blogs for SEO purposes.
If you have thoughts on these, I’d love to hear from you - come chat with me on the ‘gram!