That is the question for many of today’s businesses and organizations. And, it is a difficult one regardless of the shape and size of your company.

There is no “quick fix” for determining if blogging is right for you. I’ve worked with organizations with less than twenty people and thinking through their blog strategy was still very tough work.

A simple place to start is to answer the following questions.

What is my goal with blogging? What benefit(s) - if any - will blogging yield to my web efforts?

It would be easy to rattle off things like help with Search Engine Optimization, develop potential sales leads, or increase transparency with customers.  But, that’s not the whole story.

Charlene Li provides a nice framework for thinking through blog strategy, or more specifically on how to calculate the ROI of blogging.  She notes that, along with goals (benefits), come costs and risks.  After identifying these three elements, she writes:

“… simply divide the benefits by the costs + risks to arrive at the ROI. The key is what to use it for – it’s not enough, I believe, to use the ROI calculation only to justify a blog. It should also be used to manage and optimize the performance of the blog on an ongoing basis.”

Her research in this area is not yet complete; but, her post provides more than considerable first steps in quantifying blogging ROI.