Business blogging is an ever-changing format of online marketing and content marketing, and with ever-changing formats comes conceptions that are outdated, fabricated, and just plan wrong. Here are five common misconceptions that businesses have about business blogging, and why these particular conceptions are so misguided:
- Bolding keywords in the text is a great idea - For the thousandth time, bolding your keywords doesn't do you any good. It doesn't help the search engines crawl or index your site any better. It doesn't help readers understand your content any better. All it does is tell readers that you wrote the content for the search engines, because you bolded the keywords and that's what you care about most. Besides, it looks dumb, because there's bolded content throughout your text that seems to be formatted without rhyme or reason. Oh right, the reason was the search engines, which means it's not for the potential customer and they ought to read your competitor's content instead.
- New blog authors could ruin credibility - We actually got this from a client once. They wanted all the posts we produced to be ghostwritten because they though the introduction of a new author into their blog would jar readers and ruin credibility. We granted the client's wish because it's no biggie, but as an FYI, readers don't quite care about the author. They only care about what the author has written, and whether or not what the author has written is of any value to them. So, focusing on creating value. Creating content that isn't valuable is one way to ruin your blog's credibility.
- Ordering 30 blog posts at a time is the best way to manage the blog - We see these sorts of job posts all the time on job boards like Elance and Odesk, and we think these job posts and the people putting them up are stupid. So, you get your 30 fantastic posts from one fantastic writer. Then what? Who's going to produce your next 30? What if that person duplicates topics (oh wait, that doesn't matter because your blog is about SEO and not about the readers. Excuse me.) What if that writer doesn't write as well as the first one? How often do you publish that you need so many at once? How long do you wait before asking for the next 30? How do you determine so many keywords and topics at once (you probably did keyword research once, or are targeting general, vanity keywords)? The list of problems can go on when managing your blog in this manner.
- All My Articles Need to Pass Copyscape - We've expressed our disdain for Copyscape in the past, and although we don't encourage copying/pasting and taking other people's work, simply relying on a tool like Copyscape doesn't cut it. These tools only look at whether the words on the page match something else on the Internet, and they aren't even that accurate. They do not consider if the text was properly cited, or if it's text that needs to be taken verbatim, such as a book title or a direct quote. Unique content doesn't necessarily mean quality content. Focus on creating quality content, and if that means quoting someone else because you take the time to do research and to give credit where credit is do, then by all means do it.
- Blogging Once or Twice a Month is Good Enough - No, it's not. The magic number for a blog is 50 posts, as that's when the return on investment starts to show up on a business blog (as in noticeable traffic, social activity etc.) That means, at one or two posts per month, it will take two to four years before the ROI will show up on your business blog! That sort of pace doesn't cut it, which is why we recommend posting twice a week at a minimum (this is also where we come in if you can't publish that frequently).
If you're going to get into business blogging, if you're already business blogging, then take some time to do research on the craft to make sure you are doing it properly and implementing techniques that actually help your blog and your business. Doing things that are wrong, or inappropriate, will only make all that effort you put into the blog go to waste.
