I began personal blogging more than a year ago. For the first 8 months I was religious about posting, pumping out quality articles three to four times a week. Now I’m lucky if I put out two a month.
Sandshack.org is a new website we just launched with three blogs focused on various ocean conservation issues - These blogs are where I will be spending more of my time in the upcoming months - The ROI potential is much greater than on my personal blog.
Before this summer, I was spending more than 15 hours per week writing articles and working on developing my personal brand online, which I soon realized was robbing my company of my time and making no money.
Throughout much of my blogging career I convinced myself that the more I blogged on my personal website, the more exposure and success my company would obtain. And although this is true to an extent, I came to the following realization:
If you have a business and you want it to succeed, focusing on a personal blog is not the answer. There are plenty of other activities that you should be doing to increase company revenue and grow your business.
However, while my personal blogging slowed down, my focus on business blogging and social media use has increased.
More importantly, I forgot about my personal blog.
As a result, my company is making more money.
But I am not completely denouncing blogging or social media – the shift in focus towards my business means I redirected the time and energy I spent on personal blogging to developing a social media presence for Sand Shack.
What are your thoughts on personal blogging? If you run a business (not through your blog), has personal blogging shown a sizable ROI?
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post Brian. You definitely bring up a great point which is if personal blogging has a positive return on your company. I think that it does depend on the situation you are in as well as the role you play in the company. For example, over at Viralogy we deal directly with blogging. As a result, building relationships with other bloggers as well as my own brand has an influence on the success of our company.
I write both the company blog and my own with the company blog yielding better results as far as ROI is concerned. Still, my personal blog has helped in building credibility with clients as well as getting new leads.
I enjoy your blog and although it can be time consuming, I’d love to see the posts continue
Maybe you can try video blogging since it takes less time!
Your Blog may have not effected your bank account as you expected it to be, but you definetly did something for a lot of people. I personally got to know your story and your first email just kicked ass und got me going. So your blog is really important to me. You really put pure quality online which is unique in the web 2.0 world. most people only put blogs online and think they create value. Even some friends of moine who I told about you benefited from your blog and your story. I personally thought about putting up a blog like yours online when I’m online with my products and my shop but the massive time investment is just too much for me right now. Your blog should have been a dedication to entrepreneurship from the beginning. If people see that you love what you do than that’s a good indication to do business with you. And you don’t need to update it frequently just organize the content userfriendly so that newbies can profit from it easily.
This post feels a bit like a funeral speech for this blog.
@Joseph – Yea, totally agree, it does depend on your company and what role you play in it. Sand Shack is focusing our energy on a few ocean conservation blogs and I am sure it would be helpful if our bloggers had strong personal blogs…true that. For me, it helps in marketing my company to people like you, but in the long run, I can spend my time more wisely. Not saying I’m going to stop blogging here though!
@Jens -Thanks for all the kind words Jens – it really means a lot to me that people like you find what I write useful. Thanks also for pointing out that I need to have my content better organized here. When I moved over to this template I did not do a lot to make it user friendly…I’ll work on that!