PR pro: Blogging for business is overrated

The benefits of blogging have been clearly delineated over the past 10 to 12 years. Posts like this one do a great job of outlining the pros succinctly.

I am starting to believe these posts are—for most people and organizations, most of the time—wrong. No doubt, your blog and its regularly updated content are great for search engine optimization (SEO). But it’s not that easy, and here are four reasons why:

1. It takes time. You need to update the content regularly—this is hard, and if it’s not done you’re blog looks bad. There are other ways to reap SEO benefits besides blogging. As with all things in life, it boils down to opportunity cost. Blogging has a very high opportunity cost because publishing takes serious effort and thought, and in a world where idiocy rules, great content often goes unnoticed.

2. The odds are against you. Although there are myriad success stories about how companies and individuals have done great things for themselves via blogging, there are at least 1,000 times more failures. Yes, Chris Brogan’s blog makes him money. But odds are yours won’t do the same for you.