Why Company Blogs Fail (And How To Fix It)

In the first three to six months, it’s common for a company who is just starting to blog to ask why their website traffic is not increasing significantly. Maybe they are doing a good job at blogging 6 to 8 times per month and their company’s website traffic is slowly increasing, but it’s not reaching their goals. It’s easy to get impatient and consider the blog a failure.

Hopefully, asking yourself these 5 simple questions will give you some insight around the issue:

1. Are you consistently blogging each month?

Maybe you have a goal of 8 blogs per month. 8 blogs can be difficult and after a few months it can feel like you are getting nowhere. However, it’s a great start. If you keep at it, in two years you will have 192 pages of content that are relevant to your prospects. That’s a lot!

How in the world can you grow your website to 192 pages? By blogging each month. Google rewards websites that publish new content consistently. Over time, your website will be like a snowball rolling down hill, with increasing momentum and growing in mass. After 2 years, it becomes a competitive advantage. If a competitor wants to build credibility, they will have a lot of ground to make up. Two months at the gym is not likely to get you the results you want and neither will two months blogging. Keep it up.

2. Is your content relevant and informative?

Are you writing about what people are searching for? Do you find that your content answers common questions that your target audience is asking? Have you performed a communications audit to know what messaging resonates with prospects? A great way to make sure your content is relevant is to write about what prospects and customers are asking you. If they ask you how to do something or for your insights around a given situation, you can be confident that others are wondering the same thing. Educate your visitors and that will help you build credibility and ultimately business.

3. Are you effectively pushing out your blogs?

Are you utilizing multiple distribution channels for your blogs? You have most likely spent countless hours building your individual and company’s online profiles and engaging the community. This is a perfect outlet for you to share your blog content and help drive traffic to the website. Also, as people in your network engage on Twitter or LinkedIn, your reach will grow. Leverage the relationships you have to help increase the return on your content.

4. How competitive is the online space for your business?

Perform a thorough competitive audit to understand the digital landscape. This will help you identify the opportunities online for your company to stand out. If all your competitors are actively creating content online, it will likely be more challenging for you to stand out. The messaging and quality of the content will be critical to have strong results. On the other hand, your company may be the first in your industry to blog regularly and it will allow you to get ahead of the competition and own the space. Just like anything, the more companies who are blogging consistently, the harder it is to be remarkable and stand out.

5. Is this a long-term strategy for your company?

My last piece of advice is to have patience. If you see this as a short-term play, it can be tough to stick it out for the big returns. Patience can be difficult. People look at others who are winning and often don’t appreciate how hard it is to get there. This is the same with creating a successful company blog. Over time, your blogs will improve. The readers will keep coming back and engage in your community. And you will have a significant number of additional pages to your website which will answer a ton of questions. The net result will be more leads for your business.

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