If a blog doesn’t bring any magic like I said in the second myth of business blogging, then it should take some efforts. With current hectic schedule, there is simply no time left to blog. You have gone through your task list (or todo list, whatever) and you are enganged for months to come. How can a blog get in, demanding attention from you, while you have so many top priority things to do?

Unless it can bring you more benefits than things that are currently available on your todo list now, a blog may not get more attention. In a business world, a manager will not start a new blog project if she is running out of time on a project deadline. The third myth is there is no time for you or your team to start a blog. To answer this, I am going to attack it from several corners because this statement is very subjective in nature.

More than simply starting a personal blog, if you plan a business blog, you have many things to go through to do it right. In a corporate world, you have to cater the inner problems like deciding which topic you can’t have on your blog, who can blog, etc. At the same time, you have to sell to the top management about the benefits of having one. Not to mention having to choose only one or two goals to focus on for your blog to achieve the outcomes you want. Those all require a lot of work.

Every blogger should realize that once you start blogging, it probably will demand much time to blog. If your post attracts readers to comment, you have to respond in a timely and elegant mannger. Those also rob your precious time out of your schedule, leaving you very little time to do anything else.

Of course, no blogger involves in the same busyness all the time. If you figure out starting a blog takes too much time, first I recommend you to reassess your blogging strategy:

1. Focus on at most two goals at a time. Don’t try to do all things on your blog. If you intend to create a blog where your customers can interact and ask question, don’t post your press release unless it is highly relevant, because not only it will pollute the conversation, but you will lost the value of the archive of the blog as a customer service tool for future customers to refer to. Start a new blog if necessary for different purposes.
2. Choose the right person to carry out the goal. Only after knowing the goal, you can choose the person or a team who is right to blog. You can always hire an experienced blogger if your team don’t have the time to blog. Training an experienced blogger about your product takes a while, but keep in mind that you have to train your staff how to blog properly too.
3. Cover your bases. Carefully create a blog policy that your blogger and readers can refer to. It can helps you deal with messy situations when they occur.
4. Finally, assess if the benefits you try to bring to the table outweigh the time and money investment involved in starting and establishing a blog. Only by actually going through these steps, you can make an educated measurement if it is worth the effort to start a blog.

If all you have in mind by having a blog is to just own it because your competition and all other businesses have it, then forget it. Blog is just a big time waster. Contrarily, once you know what a blog can bring back to your business in the long run, you may see it in a way that is entirely different now. Afterall, creating a new product and marketing it take a lot of time, but they are worth while. If you spend too much time on blogging without definite, or planned, return on your investment, then most of us will not have the time to blog.