If you have built a website in the past decade, I would imagine that someone has talked to you about the importance of having a blog on the site. Blogs are the mainstay of content marketing. Because they are built to drive frequent traffic to your site, they are the honey hole of search engines, and those search engines reward frequently visited sites with a higher rank.

There are estimated to be in excess of 160 million blogs. However, most blogs go dormant shortly after launching. It is estimated that 90 percent will fail. Why is this? Here are three common reasons blogs stall out after a very short time or never get off the ground at all.

• Ran out of ideas
• It takes too long
• Can’t keep up with the demands of writing regularly

Let’s take a look at each of these and come up with a solution.

I don’t have enough creative ideas to keep my blog running

It takes time and thought to put together a good blog. But after awhile, all your ideas will run out. What then? Here are some helpful tips to keep content flowing and doing so creatively. First, identify some common problems your customers are facing. You should know this from the amount of times you get questions from them. Make a list of their problems and write about the solution.

From a creativity standpoint, not all blog content has to be written like an article in a newspaper. You can do video (think podcast), add infographics that demonstrate a solution to a problem, provide a Q and A session on common problems, showcase work that you have done for a real customer, etc. Think of the ways you like to find content. Copy the ideas that attract you and put them into your blogs.

It takes a lot of time to blog and I have better things to do with my time

To be fair, good blogging does take a lot of time, but isn’t that true of anything that is worthwhile in building your business? I would estimate that a blog should take you two hours or more to write. It may take longer if you are adding some of the creative elements we talked about above. It is a waste of time if you are not getting followers to read your content, but it is well worth it if you can attract people to your website who would actually buy your products and services. So how do you get followers? Promote what you are writing. That means you need to do more than just post it on your website. You also need to push it out to social media, e-blast it, link it to other posts, etc. Build your network and push the blog, then build your network more from the new readers who browse your blog… so on and so on.

Also, keep track of your return on investment in blogging. You most likely will not get a new customer every time you write a blog. There are steps between making a potential customer aware of your products and services and getting them to buy from you. However, take note when someone reacts to your blogs. Who are they? Are they in your target market? Do they have ties to a customer? Don’t dismiss blogging as irrelevant. Make sure you are tracing the pattern of customers who have read your blog posts.

I cannot keep up with the demands of writing regularly, it is just too much

The worst thing that can happen on a blog is when there are long gaps between posts. For it to gain a following, you have to post on a regular basis. Infrequency will kill your blog. Here are a couple of tips to keep a regular schedule. First, take some time to brainstorm ideas with other people in your office. I like to talk to sales reps who are in front of the customer on a regular basis. They tend to know what the needs are before anyone else in the company. But it also is not a bad idea to pull other creative thinkers and problem solvers into the mix. A good engineering mind is one that knows how to fix problems. Gather people together for a one hour meeting and chart their ideas. Find out which ones overlap and build a topic based on what they are saying. Second, put these ideas on a calendar. Ask yourself, are some of these topics more relevant at certain times of the year? If so, put them on the appropriate calendar space. Then gather information for upcoming topics. In that way, you are always building for blogs in the future.

Understand that a good blog is a very useful marketing tool. The smart marketer will recognize this and utilize it to their company’s benefit.