A new chart from MarketingSherpa indicates that people and companies blog for many reasons. All blogs, however, would do well to apply MarketingSherpa’s three tips for crafting a blog for maximum impact:

1. Provide genuine, heartfelt content
2. Update regularly
3. Be focused

Here’s my take. When it comes to providing genuine, heartfelt content… leave the “corporate speak” for company brochures and annual reports. (Actually leave it out altogether). The best blogs seem to have a somewhat personal, informal tone.

Updating regularly means… regularly blogging. Now, this can certainly be a challenge for large corporates and individual marketers alike. I’m currently working with a large company to establish a weekly blog. The challenge we face is being able to select a topic, get it written, have it reviewed and approved by a gaggle of ’stakeholders’ - marketing, legal, public relations, etc - each and every week. Trust me, it’s like herding cats and I honestly don’t think it’s going to happen without everyone being absolutely dedicated and committed to the task.

For the typical Internet marketer, the challenge is finding the time to blog when there’s so much else to do. Should you spend an hour on your blog… or write some articles… or contact potential JV partners… or develop that new product?

My feeling is that unless you can update your blog at least once per week, it’s not worth doing. You’re better off focusing on other activities that you can commit yourself to doing well.

Having said that, blogging once per week is really not ideal in terms of getting frequently visited by the search engines, attracting backward links and traffic, and inspiring reader interactivity, among other things. It’s probably fine if you are already a “name”, but if you view blogging as a means to becoming a “name” you really want to be blogging several times per week. We started Kikabink News - which is both a blog and a newsletter - a few months ago and, while I’m delighted with its performance so far, we have a long, long way to go in terms of achieving our goals.

Bottom line: if you don’t have the time or interest to devote to blogging, don’t bother with it. Don’t waste time setting up a blog you never update. (Trust me, I have one of those, and it’s not doing much for our business). And, by the way, you CAN be successful without a blog. The key is to choose one or two core strategies for achieving your business aims and doing them extremely well.

Finally, when it comes to “focus”, the idea here is to stay on topic, and ideally choose a topic that others are not covering as well or in the same way as you. There are tons of blogs covering various topics… how are you going to stand out and keep - indeed, increase – your readership? Usually by having something different and interesting to say.

Source: MarketingSherpa, “New Chart: Craft Your Blog for Maximum Impact: 3 Absolutes to Make it a Must-Read”, MarketingSherpa, September 2, 2008