This article for those of you who think you want to set up a company blog, but don’t know where to start.

Before you even begin researching blog designs, there are several questions you should ask yourself.

Why Blog?

Why do you want to set up a company blog? Is it because you think you need one or because you have content you want to share? If it’s the former, I’m going to stop you right there and say that’s the wrong answer.

Some common blogging goals include:

  • Sharing basic company news: Press releases, new holiday hours, and new drinks
  • Increase web traffic: It goes without saying that sharing good content from your site will likely drive up your traffic.
  • Resource sharing: Consumer education pieces that may be directly tied to your business’ services and products. This post is an example of me sharing free knowledge of a service I offer (writing).

Whether it’s because you want to share company news or you want to provide resources, you need to know what the goals of the company blog are. Don’t start on blogging if you don’t know why you’re doing it.

Who Has the Responsibility?

Who’s going to manage the company blog?

At the most basic, you need:

  • A writer
  • Possibly an editor or second pair of eyes on the draft
  • Photographer, videographer, and/or graphic designer for at least a featured image
  • Someone to upload all the content, schedule/publish it, and maybe manage comments if they’re open
  • Someone to plan all the content
  • Time

For whatever it’s worth, it’s completely possible to have all of those duties rest on one person (hi, I do this. This blog post is an excellent example). To work around having an editor, I sleep on a post and then also employ the use of Grammarly and Hemingway to catch grammatical errors.

The average blog post length this year was 1142 words, researched and written in 6+ hours. That’s a lot of time invested in one post.

If you or your staff don’t have all the skills necessary to do this, then outsourcing is a possibility. The Editorial Freelancers Association notes the common rate of both ghostwriting and trade writing at $50–60 per hour or 20–55 cents per word. Even if you do outsource, keep in mind that you will still need to manage their work.

Is Your Site Set Up for Blogging?

This isn’t as big a hurdle as you think it is. If you use a CMS like WordPress, Squarespace, or Shopify, chances are that you have it already. Otherwise, you can look into a subdomain like blog.yoursitehere.com and embed from Medium or WordPress.com.

In general, you want it to be easy to manage and write. You don’t want to spend most of your time formatting any text. If you’re not tech-savvy and/or you don’t have the time to learn, use themes and services with built-in blogs.

These are the most major questions to ask yourself before going all in on a company blog. I have seen consistent, high-quality blogging lead to more sales. But the keywords here are consistent and high quality. There is so much content out there that yours needs to have a purpose. Once you’ve decided on that purpose, then you can get started on planning.

Here are some inspirations to look at for company blogs: