We are contemplating whether to put a blog on our site.

[EcomLkwd]

The reasons we want to put one up is obviously for SEO reasons but since we are a small business with limited resources the higher ups are worried that we will start strong but slack off. Some feel that it's worse to start and not keep up the blog as it gives an unprofessional vibe to google and other users.

I maintain that I will try to keep it up to the best of my abilities and that it's better to have something than nothing.

What do you feel and do you have any experiences in this?

[FranckNlemba]

Hi

In my experience a corporate or product blog is always useful because it provides content for users and for Ecommerce websites it can be a place to answer users inquieries or to announce events, or to keep in touch with bloggers ans the community, etc

But you must have a content plan and try to post new posts on a regular basis. Don't put the focus on Google but on users. You can easily capture new visitors if your content is relevant.

In my experience (Ecommerce websites) blog traffic represents 5 to 12% of global visits with good engagement rate.

Hope this will help you and your team

[EvolveCreative]

If you're worried about it not getting updated you can always remove the dates on the posts. That way, people won't know you haven't been updating it.

Also, you can find writers on Elance and Odesk who will write great content for you for about $50-$100. Good way to keep the writing going for a cheap cost.

[firstconversion]

I suggest you read this http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2012/12/10/how-important-was-blogging-to-okcupids-success/

I (and many other in the industry) have admired the brilliance and marketing effectiveness of the OKcupid blog for many years. That article reveals how much work something of that effectiveness takes to create!

"The posts each took four to eight weeks of full-time work for him to write. Plus another two to four weeks of dedicated programming time from someone else on the team. It’s easy to look at an OkTrends post, with all its simple graphs and casual writing style and think someone just threw it together, but it probably had fifty serious revisions. And we threw out a lot of research that didn’t turn into good posts. "

People often have high hopes for a blog: "if OKCupid can knock it out of the park, why cant we?"

What is your success criteria? Can you put in enough time to actually hit it?

99% of people don't hit it and waste their time. You have to be pretty determined to be part of the 1% that make a calculable difference from their blog

[Asher]

What Franck says is correct, it creates user engagement and can help with the SEO.  And David has also mentioned outsourcing to elance and Odesk as well as not using the dates.  Also a good start.

Another thing you should do is just write a bunch of content before hand and just keep them as drafts, that way the writing won't hold you up except for maybe once a month.  In addition, you have other sites like fiverr.com which is hit or miss on how good the content is but only costs 5 dollars.

But if you want a writing service that is backed by actual people and don't want to be worried about whether they speak actual english or whatever language you are looking for, there is also professionalwritingservices.biz/ and I think they cost like $10.

However, back to your original question.  It can't hurt you to start a blog.  It promotes engagement and makes your site dynamic, instead of static.  With the addition of a blog to your site you are providing your customers an insight into your business and an opportunity for them to engage you.

If you choose to go ahead with the blog, make sure that they are socially enabled, meaning people can like it on facebook, share it on twitter, and post it on Google + (good for SEO) so that you are getting the maximum outreach with each post.  I hope this helps.

[EvolveCreative]

Hey Stephen,

I don't really agree with you here. It's quite easy to make a calculable difference with a blog for a small business owner. Not everyone needs to be OK Cupid. Not everyone needs a following of people who read the blog daily or come back to the blog often. Some businesses, such as small (local) businesses, only need a few posts on their blog to make a difference. If there is worry about it not getting updated perhaps they can simply make more content pages on their site rather than a full-blown blog effort. Content creation doesn't always mean blog. Perhaps they can do some keyword research and look for long-tails to write blog posts about. Perhaps they could target a local keyword. These evergreen posts will continue to provide benefits for their business for years.... if the keyword research is done correctly.