Ever since the explosion of social medial networking and blogs, the marketing and PR world have been pushed to keep up with the Internet as a new platform for marketing. While researching about tips and tricks of creating and maintaining a blog, I’m suddenly reminded of one tool that has helped me in many ways from biology lab research to news articles that also can be applied to strategy-making in marketing: the 5 Ws and 1 H.

For most of us, the 5Ws and 1H has been thoroughly drilled into our process of thinking by our formal education system that it almost seems like an innate trait and well, common sense. In the business of blogging, although it may seem common sense, I propose for the need of companies to consult back to the 5Ws and 1H more thoroughly. The thing is that it’s not just about answering the right answer but also asking the right questions. The 5Ws and 1 H are who, what, where, when, why and how.

Before starting a blog, companies should start building a strategy that can be constructed by asking and answering through the 5Ws and 1 H. Some questions that should be asked are maybe:

• Who is the company trying to reach with the blog?
• What is the goal of the blog?
• What are the resources needed to start the blog?
• What image is the company trying to enforce through the blog?
• What other social media tools can be used to strengthen the blog?
• Why is the company starting the blog? What are the benefits?
• And so on…

By asking these questions, the company should now have a strategy, or in other words, a blueprint of where the blog should go. One of the mistakes that companies tend to make is to ignore the strategy-making of the blog. Although it might seem like something that can be put off later, the failure for a company to establish clear goals of the blog through strategizing will seep through to the blog itself, making the blog seem unorganized and confusing. In a more blunt set of words, if you do not care about the blog, then why should the readers care?