Writing your own blog posts? Here’s why that’s a mistake

If you own a small business, there’s a good chance that you’re managing most of the work yourself. Especially if you’re just starting out, you can’t afford to hire people to do things like accounts, marketing, and answer the phones. But what happens when you’re so busy running your business, you don’t have time to do it all?

There’s one very important area of your business that you simply cannot afford to let slide. And that’s your marketing. Because if you don’t market your business, no-one will know about you, and you won’t get any new business. You will slow down, become stagnant, and then start to go backwards.

If you follow any of my social media outlets, you’ll know that I bang on quite a bit about blogging, and how crucial it is for any business to have a blog page. There are still so many small businesses who insist that they can write their own blog posts. But by having that mind-set, and thinking you can do it all yourself, are you actually sabotaging your marketing efforts?

Here’s the thing; writing a regular blog is not as easy as most business owners perceive. I do this for a living, I should know.

Because to have a successful blog, you need to put quite a lot of work in. It’s not just about writing a blog post and hitting publish. There’s a lot more to it than that. For example, have you considered:

It takes, on average, 2.5 hours to write a good blog post. That’s taking into account planning what to write about, the actual writing (about 1000 words, recommended), editing the crap out of it, checking it for SEO, spelling, grammar, and factual content, finding a decent image, and thinking of a searchable title.

While you’re writing your blog posts (which might take you longer than the above stated 2.5 hours, because you’re too close to your business, and you agonise over every little detail you write), you’re not making any money for your business. Your time could be put to much better (and more profitable use) elsewhere.

Chances are you’re not a professional writer. Therefore, how confident are you in your spelling and grammar? Have you really got the time and skill to check it, or better still have someone else check it?

Hitting publish is not the end. You have to put a lot of effort in to getting people to read it, otherwise all that effort is wasted. You have to spend time on social media EVERY DAY in order to share your content, work your database to get your posts read by your existing customer base, and make sure that you’re doing everything you can to alert people to your blog page and updates.

The fact is, when small businesses hire me to write a blog post, they’re doing it because they’ve tried, usually unsuccessfully, to do it themselves. And they realise that they just haven’t got the time of the skill to do it.

I don’t just write a blog posts for my clients, I give them their time back to run their business. I offer a service which gets new audiences noticing their brand, and reading their content. I generate interest in what they’re doing, and make them believe that this brand is the one they should be following, and the one they should be buying from.

So next time you think “You know, I really should get around to writing a blog post.” STOP! Think about what you’re committing to, and consider outsourcing it to a professional like me, who knows how to do the job properly.