Why Blogging is a Bad Idea - in most cases!

I recently had the pleasure of speaking at the Accountants Daily Strategy Days. My presentation was focused on how to market your business. There was lots of great interaction from the audience and lots of questions. One issue that I had a bit of a rant about was blogging. Everywhere you look there’s someone telling you that content marketing (aka blogging) is the ONLY WAY TO GO and if you aren’t doing it, you’ll get LEFT BEHIND.

Here’s the thing – that advice, in most cases, is complete rubbish. Want to know why? Read on

At the beginning of this year, I committed to myself (and my team) that I would do a weekly blog. How’s the working out you ask? Wellllllll, I’m probably averaging about fortnightly, in a stuttering kind of way!

Why is that? Well, there’s always something else to do. Something quicker, and easier, and less ‘creative’.

 And here’s the thing. I LOVE to come up with ideas, I love to put forward an argument (in the classical sense of the word), I love to have a point of view. And what’s worse, I can write a 700-word blog in about 30 minutes.

 And yes, it STILL doesn’t happen easily.

 So if you are someone for whom writing an article takes a full day, you hate being confrontational and the idea of negative comments on LinkedIn makes you cringe, then really, just cross blogging off your list!

Now, if you’re on the fence, here’s some more food for thought. Firstly, 10 years ago, a ‘content’ strategy was much more effective than it is today. There wasn’t so much content out there, and people had longer attention spans. Further, it was MUCH easier to build an email list.

Secondly, content on its own won’t get you far. You need a solid social media strategy around it to get anywhere, and these days, that’s a technical challenge that requires expertise in multiple media sources.

And lastly, and possibly most problematically, today, video is where it’s at.

So stop thinking ‘I must start blogging’ and either get on the video bandwagon or find a different way to market your business – referrals maybe?