The Risk Of Loosing Business Focus When Blogging
A warning for blog evangelists (like myself). We should "...proceed more cautiously when promoting to businesses in such blanket terms that they must have a blog because not every business needs a hammer" according to Things that ... make you go hmm.
I can only agree. Of course, I'd expect everyone to agree. But it's still valuable to remind oneself from time to time.
Actually I think there's been so much discussion about when to blog, that it would be interesting to discuss when a company absolutely shouldn't blog. "Things that..." throws in two suggestions. First of all when the company doesn't need the work a blog might generate. That's the easy and perhaps too obvious one. The other one is more interesting -- "...if it takes the business focus away from what is making it money just to do something that may make them more money in the long run, that might not be a risk worth taking."
Now that's a question I struggle with every week. I know all the reasons why a company could use a blog. I have seen them all work. Blogs deliver results. But they also consume time. And they have this tendency to become addictive (that's why we believe in them so much, I guess).