Blogging as a Disservice
You know who you are. All you do is regurgitate news articles from commonly available sources. Are you assuming your clients don’t have access to tagged RSS feeds from BusinessWeek, AdAge, and Forbes? Are you assuming they don’t have time? Are you assuming that four lines of puerile comments really add to those common-garden articles you’re posting?
Before you start a business blog, ask yourself two questions:
1. Do I have something to say? If you’re just doing it for search engine rank, don’t. It doesn’t work when you just repurpose stuff, anyway.
2. Can I post something new and interesting at least once a week on average? If the answer is no, again, don’t bother—a rarely-updated RSS feed is worse for search engine placement than no feed at all.
And, once you start a blog, ask yourself two questions before you post:
1. Does this do anything better than the mainstream media? Or the big blogs? You know, the ones that already cover your industry. What can you do better than them? Regurgitating their news doesn’t do anyone any favors. What unique position pieces, methodologies, tips and tricks, leading-edge techniques, opinion pieces can you bring to the table?
2. Is this uniquely of value to your customer or client? In other words, is it something that they can take and immediately use in their business? Is it something that has not been repeated 85,000 times across the blogosphere?
If you can’t answer both of these questions “yes,” do not post.
So. Please. You know who you are. Take a look at your blog and ask yourself: Am I doing anyone a service by writing this? And if you aren’t, please stop.
