For many B2B companies, the thought of blogging can be a nightmare, and I don’t necessarily disagree.

So let’s pretend you and your co-workers want to take that next step, here are the five most common objections that you and your team will have to overcome in order to proceed down the road of successful blogdom.

1. What do I write about?

This is the ultimate copout, but the answer to this question will always be: “you tell me“ by asking two questions:

• What’s going on in your industry?
• What about any of that do you have an opinion about?

Assuming you actually pay attention to what is going on in your industry, these should be answered in rather short fashion.

2. Who is going to read it?

Well, no one, (at first) … but that’s because you need to build an audience by integrating your blog and individual posts into the rest of your marketing plan. You may write the most elequent grouping of nouns and verbs ever written, but unless you know how to share it, its useless. A B2B blog, by itself, cannot stand alone.

You can integrate your blog rather effortlessly into:

• The main navigation of your website, or at least your home page
• Other social media (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn)
• Your email newsletter

And if you can’t or aren’t doing these three things, perhaps a blog isn’t for you.

How do I keep up?

A blog schedule and goal setting are a serious concern, especially early on when the return is minimal at best. However, if you can’t dedicate five hours a week to a blog either personally or as a group, than a blog probably isn’t for you. The five hours goes way beyond writing, in terms of research, tracking, analyzing, etc.

However, I’m guessing anyone reading this far has assumed as much. To develop a blog schedule, one must assign tasks, author specialties and times when the blog should be getting done. Additionally, if one person doesn’t “own” the blog, it’ll never come to fruition.

Isn’t blogging software expensive?

Actually, no. One that we recommend for a lot of clients, WordPress, is essentially free. However, the look and feel of your blog is directly proportional to the amount of time you spend on it. If you can get a professional to design it, or at least guide you, kudos.

A blog should:

• Look and feel like the rest of your site, i.e. an extension of your brand
• Be on your site, off the root of your domain, e.g. www.yoursite.com/blog. If you can avoid it, don’t start your blog on a free domain, instead use that time to implement it on your site.

When should I see results?

Again, how much time are you putting into this blog? What are your goals? How realistic are your goals?

These questions can only be answered if you know what you want to achieve, as this and the other four questions and concerns are just the beginning.

Once you’ve overcome these objections, the hard part starts: goal setting, planning, implementation and tracking, all of which are more in-depth (as are the benefits) than we can get into here. However, if you are interested in at least starting that conversation, let us know, we can help fill in the blanks.

Otherwise, check out more information about our social media marketing strategy and capabilities.

Flickr photo courtesy of Zoriah