This is part 2 of the post dedicated to SWOT analysis. If you have missed the first part, I strongly suggest you read that first.
II)A swot analysis of a blogger
If you don’t have a blog yet, a SWOT analysis projected on yourself, could help you have an idea regarding your capabilities to develop a successful blog on a specif niche.
However, at this point, the first you need to decide upon the niche that you will want to target, because you must see what are your strengths and weaknesses in direct relation to that. For example, if you want to make a successful blog on science, you will need to have different strengths than for a blog concentrated on poetry or arts. If you haven’t chosen your niche yet, you may find the article choosing a niche helpful.
In order to understand better how you can benefit from a SWOT analysis projected on yourself let’s take hypothetical example:
Our subject
Targeted niche: Cell phones
Strengths
1) Vast experience with mobile phones (due to the daily job as a sales man in a specialized store)
-Quick access to information and documentation for new products launched on the market
-Knows each product with all it’s “ins” and “outs” and therefore able to make good quality and original reviews
-Knowledge of the services that are compatible with each product
2) Passion for technology
3) Medium experience with creating printed layouts and small presentation websites
4) A decent initial budget
Weaknesses
1) Daily job is taking too much of his time.
2) Not very familiar with search engine optimization and website promotion techniques
3) He is not a “popular” name online, doesn’t own other websites, so will not benefit from a starting “boost” in a very competitive niche.
Opportunities
1) Due to his good knowledge of the products that he is reviewing, he is likely to get a lot attention from some “big boys” that could help his blog become popular
2) The possibility of extending his online business to affiliate marketing and even an online store
3) Taking advantage of some periods of the year where the demand (and therefore the number of people interested to know about certain products) raises exponentially (such as Christmas and Easter).
Threats
1) If he get’s fired from his daily job, he will loose the access to information and in a such a dynamic market, his knowledge would soon become obsolete
2) He could loose his enthusiasm soon, if he does not see results within a certain period of time.
The strategy
After having written down all that, it is easy to understand that this guy’s most important strengths come from his day job. Actually the potential success of his blog is based on that. I am sure he would have been aware of the strong points that he had without having to write them down, but probably he wouldn’t have realized that the source of his strengths was so important. Now he knows that the more involved he becomes in some aspects of his daily job, there more chances he has to succeed with his blog.
This is the starting point for developing his strategy. Our subject knows what he’s strengths and weaknesses are, and what are the opportunities and threats that he may encounter during the project.
The next step would be to figure out a way to minimize his weak points. He can do this either by research, or even attending some SEO training, or pay someone to take care of that issue for him. Unfortunately his time is very limited, due to his daily job, and if he goes with the first choice, he wouldn’t have time to develop the actual content for his blog. Further more, search engine optimization does not imply only “on page optimization”. It also requires submission to lots of directories (at least at the beginning) to gain some link popularity in order to get started, and that will take even more of his time.
So naturally, he goes with the second choice and pay for some SEO services and inbound links from high PR directories leaving him with just enough time to concentrate on producing quality content and focus on the opportunities that will come
The wrong way
What approach our subject would have taken without making a SWOT analysis in the first place? Well, it’s hard to say for sure, but a lot of people (not only bloggers) when they discover some of their weaknesses they instinctively try to improve in those areas all by themselfs. Sometimes it can be a good thing but in this particular case, the SWOT analysis proved that it was just the opposite.
Assuming that this guy would have struggled to learn more in order to take care of his weak points himself, he would have faced a serious time management problem. The “next best” alternative would have been to launch his blog a lot later. However, things could have gone in an even worse direction; he could have decided to neglect his daily job, and that could have caused a failure, given the fact that his strengths came mainly from there.
In conclusion, this type of analysis is all about successful planing and making decisions; and it is a lot easier to make a good decision if you lay all the facts on the table (almost like math).
Basically you can compare the SWOT analysis to a map that shows you the way(s) to reach your destination (in our case OBJECTIVES).
Technorati Tags: Blogging, business blogs, SWOT analysis for blogs
