Business Blogging Using the Iron Triangle

As a blog content writer, I’ve always looked to the old saying that came out of the software industry: “Fast, good or cheap. Pick two.” Known as the Project Management Triangle, or Iron Triangle, the concept has to do with balancing speed, cost, and quality.

The idea, of course, is that if you develop something quickly and of high quality, it will be very costly to do, and if you develop something quickly and cheaply, it will not be of high quality. Anything of high quality and low cost will take a long time to complete.

The Lean method is a way of developing high quality at the lowest possible cost, based on Eric Reis’ book The Lean Startup. The method advises developing the simplest version of a product or service that can test your hypothesis. After you learn from the experiment, you take the product or service and either refine it into excellence, or determine failure and make a pivot.

Of all marketing tactics, I’m convinced, business blogging is the best suited for implementing that lean startup concept. By offering a “content tasting” on your blog, and doing that regularly and frequently, while monitoring and measuring reader responses every step of the way, you are in an ideal position to “pivot”.

Think about it. Business blogs are the perfect marketing tool for niche markets. As a business owner or professional practitioner, you are not going out to find customers through your blog content. Blogs work the other way around, through “pull marketing”. The people who find your blog are those who are already online looking for information, products, or services that relate to what you know, what you have, and what you do!

In fact, that’s exactly what I love most about blogging as a communications channel. Each post can have a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of your business. With proper tracking, you quickly learn what’s working and what’s less effective; “pivoting” in the blog content does not involve any lengthy or costly new research.

When it comes to marketing decisions, business blogging can help achieve the “impossible” and turn that Iron Triangle in your favor.