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5 Questions to ask yourself before starting a blog?

Posted 28 Jan 2010 - No Comments - leave yours now!

There are thousands of blogs out there waiting for readers to find them, they all have their place, they all jostle for position within their niche. Many blogs find a good readership and flourish. Unfortunately, just as many dwindle and end up looking neglected.
The following points will, hopefully, help you in your preparation to start a blog, or aid you in refining what you are already doing and stop yours being one of the ‘unloved’ blogs out there.

I’ve been running this blog, my first, for the last seven months. These are the question I wish I had asked myself eight months ago.

Why do you want to start a blog?
There are many reasons to blog, and each one needs a different approach and mind-set to make it work.

Personal Journal - The original idea of blogging was to keep a personal journal online that was accessible to the rest of the world. Many people still run personal blogs for many reasons. They aren’t started for self-promotion or to sell anything, they are a simple release for people that feel they need to share a part of themselves with the rest of the world.

Business Promotion – Businesses soon spotted an opportunity to market themselves and their products through the medium of blogging. It’s a brilliant way to give a big organisation a human face that customers, or more importantly prospective customers, can get to know better. If you learn about a company and have an interest in what they have to say, it’s not a great leap to try whatever services or products they sell.

Sharing Knowledge/Experience – This might seem like an altruistic motive for starting a blog and in many ways it is, but of course it has its benefits. Maybe you want to share the things you have learned in your life and help others that find themselves in similar situations. Perhaps you are particularly skilled in a certain field and feel like sharing your knowledge to help others in the industry. To make yourself a leader in your field can be great for your personal and business reputation.
It never hurts to give a little back, and blogging might just be a way to do it.

Making Money – Some people set out on the wide world of blogging with the sole object of making a bit of cash.

A lot of my favourite blogs have aspects of all of the above reasons in varying quantities, which is a great goal to aim for. If you can inject some personality into your content, promote yourself/your business, educate and instruct as well as making a bit of money along the way, then I applaud you. Also let me know how you’ve done it!

Do you have something to say?
So you know why you want to blog, but what have you got to say? As I said earlier there are thousands of blogs floating about on servers all over the world. There’s a good chance that someone out there is already doing what you want to do, already saying what you have to say. Does this mean you should subscribe to their RSS feed and give up? Of course not! As my fiancée often reminds me: “It’s not what you say, it’s the way you say it!”

A blog is a very personal thing, even if you have multiple contributors. You may have similar things to say than the other blogs in your chosen niche, but it will be your personality that will set your message apart. The tricky bit is instilling yourself into your copy.

A good exercise to do before beginning a blog is to try and plan the first three months of articles that you would like to run. If you have a three month head start when you launch your blog the three months after that should be easy! Well, easier.

The important thing is to keep reminding yourself of the reason you started your blog, you probably won’t find an immediate readership, so you have to get into a frame of mind to write your content for yourself first You have to enjoy the process of blogging before you can consider the possible rewards you might get through it. If you enjoy producing the content, the chances are others will enjoy reading it.

Do you have the time to maintain a blog?
To keep a blog going is a huge commitment. Not only does it take a lot of time and effort to produce the content for it, you will find yourself devoting just as much time trying to promote it, trying to get others to read what you have taken all that time to post.

This is where some bloggers can lose their way. You might find you have invested months of your life into making a blog and writing interesting content and nobody is taking any notice. Not only do you have to be prepared to invest your precious time, you have to be prepared to ‘waste’ that time. Though I would argue that the time isn’t wasted. I’m willing to bet you will have gathered a small audience around you, and you will have learned a lot about writing, time management and social networking. All of which will stand you in good stead to carry on blogging, but be wasted if you decide to give up.

Time might not be a massive consideration if you are running a personal blog, you have the freedom to post as much or as little as you like. Things are quite different if you are maintaining a blog with a larger purpose.
Most business or “brand” blogs like to stick to a strict schedule. They post a specified amount of articles a week, with each article offering something different. Personally I aim to publish two articles a week; one is a freebie of sorts, the other an essay style offering.
I would say that my own schedule is quite easygoing compared to larger blogs, but I have to fit blogging into my already busy work-life.

If you set yourself up to undertake a business or promotional blog you have to make it part of your work schedule along with other tasks that don’t quite fit into what you actually do for a living. For example you need to classify it in the same manner as doing your accounts, or drumming up more work. If you are self employed you need to set some time aside each week to update your accounts, even though you aren’t an accountant. Your blog needs to be afforded the same sort of consideration.

What do you want to achieve with your blog?
It’s always good to set yourself goals. To give yourself something to strive for is an excellent motivational tool. You also set yourself up for a great sense of achievement if you reach your goal.
What can you achieve by running a blog?

Community – You might just want to get to know a few more people around the world. You can use your blog to create a small community of like-minded people. This is why comments sections are so crucial. It’s easy to forget that there is a person behind the webpage pulling the strings. Interacting with your readers is a great way to inject your personality into your site.

Branding – You might see your blog as a marketing tool that helps you sell your brand. If managed properly you can reach people that might have been unaware of your business because your other marketing activities don’t reach them.

Networking – For business blogs creating a community of readers can easily turn into networking. You can open yourself up to a whole new group of people than can help you run your business.

A new career? – Perhaps you are aiming to become a professional blogger? This first foray into the world of social media might be your first step to becoming a writer and contributor to numerous other blogs, while making a nice wage from the advertising on your own site.
If you want to achieve this good luck to you, but it’s a long and hard road. If money is the main motivation for you to start a blog it might be worth re-reading this article and then decide if money is a big enough incentive to undertake so much time and effort, without any promises of success.

How will you measure success?
The answer to this question is obviously dependent on your aims. Even then it can be difficult to judge if your blog is a success.

If you set out to write a personal blog where you share yourself with the wider world, then success might be as simple as one person reading your thoughts and acknowledging your opinions.

For business blogs you will need to employ a few tracking systems to keep tabs on how your blog effects things like site traffic and subsequent sales. You can get a rough idea of how many people are reading your blog through RSS & email notification statistics too.

The bigger advantages of blogging are a lot harder to measure. It’s great to have a big audience (I would assume), even better to interact with that community, and use it as a helpful resource in your life or business. However, you’ll never truly be able to judge the extent of your blogs influence, you can only guess what seeds of thought your blog might plant in peoples heads. It could be months before a regular reader becomes active in your community or decides to buy into whatever it is you might be promoting. Success in blogging is accrued over a long period of time. So it pays to be consistent.

The biggest measure of success in any blog is the enjoyment you can get from running it. To be a successful blogger you have to love doing it, and you have to enjoy the company of your readers, any other benefits you might get on top of that is a bonus.

I’d love to hear your opinions too. Did you consider these questions before you started a blog? If not do you wish you had? Can you add any questions that might help others starting a blog?

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