In the beginning, there was the simple “web log.”   The web log eventually evolved into one of the earliest and most effective tools of the modern internet: the blog.

Blogging soon became a “thing” for web-savvy users who wanted to share a piece of their lives, their knowledge, or their interests with the rest of the world. Before long, advertisers saw the potential in blogging as well. Eventually, brands followed suit.

Now, while blogging is still considered by expert marketers and marketing strategists to be one of the best marketing approaches available,  its proper implementation is awash in misconception, the deadliest of which is in fact just two sides of the same coin: people either say it absolutely works, or it definitely doesn’t.

The False Dichotomy of Blogging

Why can there be no middle ground? Isn’t it possible that blogging will work for your business, but, for instance, only on weekends?

This false argument leads business owners to make rash, expensive decisions (when assured that blogging will most definitely work) or an irrational fear of throwing their money down a hole (when told that it won’t).

“It Works Like Magic”

When someone tells you blogs work like magic, you should run. This person either doesn’t know what they’re talking about, are prone to hyperbole, or worse, they don’t understand how blogs work in marketing.

Almost nothing in online marketing “works like magic.” That’s the beauty of it: everything is measured, tracked, and monitored, so you can actually adapt, adjust or continue forward with concrete ROI information.

The same can be said for blogging. You can’t expect to start a blog and suddenly increase your bottom-line. Blogs, however, do affect your bottom-line in these fundamental ways:

• Blogs increase your visibility through fresh, optimized, and high-quality content
• Blogs improve user engagement which improves the chances of purchase or retention
• Blogs target specific users who are more likely to convert into leads
• Blogs help increase your brand’s authority in your niche

Notice that while fundamental, these points are nuanced: blogs do increase visibility, but you need fresh, optimized, and high-quality content. Blogs do target specific users and increase engagement, but you need to know how.

It’s the same with the flip side of the argument:

“It Doesn’t Work”

Every business and brand is scurrying to become its own publisher these days because providing quality content works. The web runs on content, and blogs are just one of many channels to create the much-needed content that readers crave.

This “blogging doesn’t work” line is easily proven false by replacing the word “blog” with just about anything else that has been proven to work:

• Online marketing doesn’t work
• Medicine doesn’t work
• Advertising doesn’t work

See the pattern here?

Whoever said medicine doesn’t work either took the wrong medicine or didn’t take enough of it. The same goes for blogs.

The essential ingredient is Strategy.

If you want to deploy a business blog for your brand, you need a strategy. It’s like when you need prescribed medicine, you need an expert diagnosis and a prescription before you start your routine.

Content marketing — the larger category that blogging falls into — requires a strategy in order to work to its fullest potential. The simplest steps towards a working content strategy can be simplified into the following steps:

• Figure out the business goals your want to attain through content creation (blogs being one channel of content)
• Align your objectives to your sales funnel
• Align your sales funnel to the buyer profiles (“personas”) of your target customers
• Develop a content road map to dictate quality, consistency, and a posting schedule
• Implement, measure performance, tweak and re-measure

There is, admittedly,  one justifiable reason to say “blogging doesn’t work” – and that is if you aren’t able to do any of the above. This is where expert support from content strategists and marketers becomes important.   Each of the steps above needs to be developed and can encompass everything from business development to copy writing.

It all boils down to one important truth: blogs aren’t guaranteed cash cows — but cows aren’t guaranteed cash cows either. You need to feed them, support them, and otherwise take care of them. You need to know what you’re doing to get something out of them. And that’s just common sense.

Don’t fall in to the trap of misconceptions about blogging, or you might just miss out on one of the most effective methods of your entire marketing and branding effort.