photo credit: HPUPhotogStudent

The motivation does matter. If you’re thinking a blog will save your dying small business, replace a marketing strategy, or provide personal fulfillment, maybe get some therapy instead.

You should NOT blog as a (sole) means of advertising and marketing.

A blog can be part of your overall marketing scheme, but a blog itself is not an advertisement. Let’s look at what advertising is.

“The true secret of advertising success is to say the right thing to as many people as you can afford to reach over and over again. Word-of-mouth advertising is the result of having impressed someone, anyone, deeply.” -Roy H. Williams

The problem with using a blog to advertise is this: a blog needs to provide valuable content which gives your readers new information over time, not the same sales message repeated ad infinitum.

You can use your blog as a piece of your marketing strategy. It’s a tool. It helps you establish credibility. It helps you connect with your customers. It can contain advertisements. You can lead people to it by means of your other advertisements. But it is not, itself, an advertisement.

You should NOT blog because you “need an online presence.”

If you need an online presence, you’d first better stop and figure out why.
Do you need a storefront?
A place for your customers to hang out and swap war stories?
A place to build community based around a common interest?
An informational website where people can find out more about you?

There are different ways to have a “presence” online. A blog is only one of them, and not necessarily the right one. If you have a genuine reason to produce valuable content on a regular basis, then a blog is a good idea. Otherwise, no.

You should NOT blog because Facebook isn’t working.

First, you should figure out why Facebook isn’t working. Once you do that, you’ll know if you need a blog or not.

You should NOT blog because your competitor has a blog.

Unless you can and will do it better.

You should NOT blog because you have no marketing money and so this will have to do.

See blogging as related to advertising and marketing, above.

You should NOT blog because “blogging is social networking,” because it isn’t.

Blogging is producing valuable content on a regular basis. Social networking is establishing connections with people via the myriad of social media and networking tools on the Internet.
You might network and get a chance to promote your blog in that social networking. And when you combine blogging with social networking, you can get something very good indeed.
But alone, no. Not the same.

You should NOT blog because YouTube scares you.

If you’re thinking about blogging because some other method of reaching your audience, such as YouTube, has been suggested to you and you just want to avoid it… because it scares you…
You might as well bite the bullet and do the thing that scares you first.
Fear is usually a sign of Resistance; your brain is telling you this is way over your head, but your gut is telling you this is what will work. So your self-defense mechanism kicks in, and scrambles for something that will make everybody happy. A compromise.

Don’t blog to avoid some other means of communication that will actually work better for you.

You should NOT blog because you need a way to express yourself.

No. No, you should definitely paint instead. Or write poems (but don’t blog them. Please). Or perhaps dance. Or, if you must, go ahead and blog to express yourself, but don’t call it a business blog.