...not unless you're prepared to maintain it.

In my recent newsletter, Developing an Effective Content Strategy, I quoted Lee Erickson, co-founder of Erickson Barnett, who said this about content strategy, "It has to come from the top down. If management doesn't believe in it, then client work will always come first." Blogging is a critical part of their content strategy, to which they have dedicated both time and resources.

One of the toughest aspects of blogging is doing it consistently. Because blogging is not likely to be anyone's primary job function, writing won't take priority over production. However, you need to be as committed to maintaining your blog as Lee and her team is. This means finding a way to post regularly without compromising your main thing, even if it means making writing a part of someone's job description on your team.

One concept that most of my LinkedIn question respondents brought up was relevance. As Denice MacDonald, President at MacDonald Consulting Services, put it, "Relevance is the key to blog success - I need to be informed, amused or entertained or the blog has no value." So, how do you make your posts relevant?

We decided that setting up an "editorial calendar" for each blog would be an effective way to ensure consistency and relevance in our writing. This doesn't mean being as rigid as scheduling specific topics for specific days. Rather, it's a way to identify different formats in advance and plan an overall schedule in which they recur. This could include ideas like monthly interviews, weekly reviews of websites or software, occasional employee profiles, or case studies after important projects are completed. Building your blog around a schedule will create consistency for you, as the author, and for your readers, who will learn to expect particular kinds of posts and content. Once you have a structure in place, you can fill in gaps with ideas for particular posts as they occur to you.

Some "Straight Talk"
The bottom line is that blogging is no easy task. Great bloggers may make it look easy, but you can trust that they work very hard to do it. Above all, don't rush in to blogging. However, if you are ready to do each thing I've described in this newsletter, then a blog could be a great boost to your web strategy.