Starting a blog for your business is a big decision, although a very valuable one. Keeping it going though, is a challenge many small businesses face. This can be for many different reasons, but I find these are the most common ones I hear from small business owners:
- You don’t have any ideas even to get you started
- You got started, but now you’ve run out of ideas
- You’ve got ideas, but you’re not sure what to do with them
- You’re not sure that you’re saying the right things about you and your business
- You put off writing a post as it’s not an established habit in your working week
- You don’t know how to write blogs posts that are relevant to what you do and that convert into sales
- You’re not sure writing is your thing
- You don’t know how to promote the posts you have published
Do any of those sound familiar to you? Or are you facing a different challenge?
Hopefully, that list should give you some hope that you’re not the only one. It’s quite easy for blogging to make you feel a bit despondent, if you don’t get round to writing posts or if your posts don’t generate engagement or sales.
You’re not the only one
Take that list from other small business owners as some reassurance. It’s really not just you. And even if you get this wholly cracked for you and your business, there’ll still be some days ahead when you have the same moment of doubts.
But it will be worth the effort.
First, a word from Seth
I’m a big fan of Seth Godin. I highly recommend subscribing to his blog and his new podcast, Akimbo. There are a number of his books around the house, from Purple Cow to All Marketers Are Liars. On a recent podcast episode about why there’s no such thing as writer’s block he said something that really resonated:
Don’t say “I have no good ideas”. Begin by saying “I don’t have enough bad ideas”.
He talked about arriving with the best you’ve got right now. It’s probably not perfect. But if you start with it, then you can always make it better. If you never start, then you can’t improve it.
Finding a way through each challenge
My business is to help other small businesses find words that work for their business goals, and that includes taming their business blog. I’m going to be posting a series of posts that give you some pointers for getting you and your business out of each these challenges.
One a week, so you can work through them if they all resonate with you, or pick your week. I’ll be doing them in the same order as the list.
Want to make sure you don’t miss one?
Sign up here to make sure you get every post from me, and you’ll get a welcome bonus of 7 steps for planning a month’s content in 30 minutes. This is a theme that I’ll come back to over the course of these posts, so it’ll stand you in good stead.
Ready to go? Let me know which of these challenges are true for you and your business, or if you’re facing something completely different.
Great read, thanks for doing that. I’m sure these will come in useful.
Thank you Avni!
I always wonder if anyone is actually reading or enjoying the content! Sometimes that is demotivating but I keep going thinking at least it will give me content for workshops or the like.
Do you look at your analytics? That should show you at least someone is reading what you write. I think people comment less on blogs now, so maybe it’s more about interaction on your social media channels? If you’ve got good responses there then that should show that people value what you’re writing.