Experts Say Blogging Won’t Work for Your Small Business

(businessandblogging.com)  It may be a new day, but I’m still stuck on my last post about the small business blogging article in the New York Times. Especially their statement that “while blogs may be useful to many more small businesses, even blogging experts do not recommend it for the majority.”

Hold on. They’ve just said that blogging is a low-cost, high-return marketing tool – and then they jump straight to excluding the majority of businesses?

That doesn’t make sense to me.

Perhaps blogging isn’t for every business. Perhaps there are target markets that can’t be attracted by using one.

But I’d rather at least try to make it work for a business before I dismissed it out of hand.

The article quotes Guy Kawasaki as saying “If you’re a clothing manufacturer or a restaurant, blogging is probably not as high on your list as making good food or good clothes.”

Well, that’s true – if you think of blogging as merely a nice past-time or a personal hobby. But we were discussing a low-cost, high-return marketing tool – that should be pretty high up on the list of things small business owners should focus on, no matter how good their food or clothes.

The Times then goes on to state that blogging requires a time commitment and an ability to write (which is not necessarily true in the age of podcasts, lolcats and tweeters). In any case, marketing is something that small businesses are used to delegating or hiring out. Blogs don’t have to be an exception. Even hired out they can still be one of the lowest-cost marketing tools.

The article also quotes blogging expert Aliza Sherman Risdahl author of The Everything Blogging Book: Publish Your Ideas, Get Feedback, And Create Your Own Worldwide Network (Everything Series)who identifies the characteristics of businesses that have a natural fit with blogging. I agree with much of what Ms. Risdahl says, especially the concept that a blog should have a strategy and a focus.

But I would rather start with the approach that there is the potential for a blog in every business – and try like heck to find the angle, the niche, the style, the strategy, the focus and the market, before I decided to give in.

The potential is just too high and the risk is just too low to quit before giving it an intelligent try.

So, let’s re-cap.

Blogging as a Marketing Tool:

Low-cost. Low-risk. Can be hired out. High potential for return.

Tell me again why it’s not a good fit for your business?