What planning is needed to start my B2B blog?

Our recent webinar on business-to-business blogging resulted in more questions than we had time to answer so Mark Schaefer agreed to provide a personal reply on our blog to each question.

Question #4 comes from Neil:

Do you recommend starting slow with blogging? What is a good way to initially scope if resources and strategy is unsure?

Neil, this is an excellent question and one that I hear often.

Let’s break it down into two parts: starting out with 1) a strategy and 2) resources.

Over time, your “voice” on your blog will evolve as you gain confidence and receive feedback from your audience. However, you should start out with some initial strategy — an idea of your purpose, a view of what you’re trying to achieve and the needs of your target audience. If you keep switching directions, you will end up confusing your readers, losing them, and wasting a lot of time.

So whether you start slow or fast, have a vision of what you are trying to achieve. It will change over time and it should as you grow and learn.

As far as resources, there is no absolute answer, but in the “start slow” scenario, let’s plan to allocate 4 hours per blog post. This would assume about 2.5 hours to write and edit a 400-500 word article and find an appropriate piece of accompanying art, and another 1.5 hours for internal approvals, external promotion, responding to reader comments, and handling any initial technical issues.

This is a generous time allocation that will improve as your blogging skills improve.

I do think it is a smart idea to start slow, find your voice, receive some feedback, and have some quick wins you can promote to the boss. Just keep in mind that to really receive business benefits, you will need to blog with some regularity at some point.