Setting goals for your business blog

You would think that one of the first things you figure out before starting a corporate blog would be what some level of expectation of what you will get out of it. However many times an organization will start a blog just because they hear so much about it, or feel that they should because person/org. X Y and Z have one.

Setting goals is a critical part of progressing in life, both in terms of an organization or company but also personally. Blogs are no different. The vast possibilities of a blog make it even more important to be tied closely to a goal. Failure to set a goal is like staring at a blank canvas and simply smearing paint around randomly rather than thinking about what you actually want to create.

By setting a goal (or even goals) it gives you direction in the content, publishing schedule, and methods to develop metrics to measure the success of the blog against that goal. For example an typical goal may be to get feedback from your brand advocates on any new product prototypes, or service offerings. A company could start a blog that just randomly posted what was new, and maybe that would get some readers… but you wouldn’t know if it was being effective or not.

By defining the goal of getting market research and feedback you can see how much valuable information is obtained from the blog, how much word of mouth is generated by those brand advocates who have now become a part of the product development process, and how sales were effected because of it. It also would let you focus on keeping the blog posts focused around product development cycles and releasing valuable information as necessary.

Those subscribed to the blog would be those who were deeply vested and interested in learning more about the product development cycle, and would be ten times more likely to read a post, share it with a friend, respond and offer feedback, or bookmark it for later reference.

Blogs can have several goals, but make sure you define at least one.