Nowadays it seems that everyone has a blog – and if you are a business owner it seems that you really need to have one to help market your business. However, myths arise from lack of information and in the case of blogging, often from inexperience. Some of the common WordPress blogging myths related to blogs in general and business blogs in particular are:
Myth #1: Blogging is Not Appropriate for Business
Says who? It’s easy to see the reasons and benefits of having a business blog. A blog enhances a business. Having a website is no longer enough. You can increase sales, establish excellent PR, reach your target market and become known for your knowledge and expertise, all by having a blog.
Myth #2: Your Business Income Will Increase Immediately After Starting a Blog
Let’s get real. A newly established business often doesn’t show a profit for years! Starting a blog with the expectation it will earn money is a mistake. Like any business, a blog takes time to establish itself. Some may taste success faster than others, but it’s a similar story in running a business. Give your blog time, tend to it properly and don’t give up. Your business blog may not ever earn you money directly, but the indirect increase in your income through it will definitely be there.
Not convinced? Consider this: all those contacts you made through blogging that led to more business. Sure it’s not your blog making money directly, but it is your business increasing through contacts you made via your company’s blog.
Myth #3: Blogging Doesn’t Require Much Time
I’ll be honest, I thought this too. Just one week into blogging and I realized I was mistaken. Blogging doesn’t require much time only if your blog is so established that you’ve worked out all the kinks and it now runs like a well oiled machine.
Since not many of us have reached that stage, blogging requires a lot of time and dedication. The minute a post is published we start worrying about the next one. We’re thinking two weeks ahead and panicking how we don’t have ideas for blog posts after that.
On a minimum, a blog needs an hour or so daily.
Myth #4: Maintaining a Blog is Easy
Maintaining a blog is as tough as keeping a business afloat. There is nothing easy about keeping a blog going successfully. From having content issues to traffic woes, nothing comes easy in blogging. To get results you have to work hard at your blog and exercise patience.
Myth #5: A Blog has to be Updated Everyday
While it is true that a blog has better chances of becoming popular if it is updated daily, there is not hard and fast rule. What works for some blogs may not necessarily work for others. To get results you have to work hard at your blog and be patient. It also depends on your niche and topic of your blog. If most of your blogging requires feature length blog posts then blogging daily is not realistic. The posts would need time to sink in and register with your readers as well as get the proper attention and comments.
It also depends on your niche and topic of your blog. To find out what frequency of posts works best for your blog, you will have to experiment with different schedules.
Myth #6: You Must be an Excellent Writer
That’s a bit like saying you must be great at holding meetings to have a successful business. You don’t have to be an excellent writer to get your point across in a blog post. Spellings and typos (occasional) are all overlooked if the basic idea is intriguing. To write a blog, all you have to be able to do is string two grammatically correct sentences together and know your mind well enough to convey your message.
Alison Rothwell
Alison is the Director and Founder of WP Fiddly Bits, the WordPress Website Maintenance experts, and contributes to the WP Fiddly Bits WordPress blog. She also uses her background in marketing to help clients get found everywhere online.
