I'm struggling with "to blog or not to blog" based on the business that my company is in.

We sell process engineering instrumentation (flow meters, temperature controllers, etc - not exactly glamorous stuff).

Since we're strictly B2B and since we're not really a "hot topic", I'm not sure that people would be interested in reading / blogging about industrial instrumentation unless they have a whole lot of time on their hands at work (not likely for an engineer) or unless they have a passion for process controllers (again, not so likely).

I'm not sure that we could find the readership or participation - and I'm worried that the blog would be viewed as a transparent attempt at inbound links, you know?

I've done some surfing to see if there are other blogs out there that deal with industrial instruments, and there aren't any that I could find. I don't know if this represents that a blog on this topic is an "untapped opportunity" or if, simply, noone cares about this topic...

What do you think???

Your blog should be a transparent attempt to build community. Given the B2B buying cycle, anything to keep them coming back until they make the purchase decision is a good idea. The real dilamme is more likely whether the amount of time it takes (or money, if you outsource) is worth the community you build and the retention of prospects and customers.

Building link? Yes, a blog can be very useful for that, too. But without a very clever strategy, it might not be worth the effort.

i suggest you can try use blog to be close with your customer / future customer. And maybe you can use the blog to share information about process instrumentation. Because, the main use of internet is to found an information. So, when there already a lot of visitor you can try to change them from regular visitor to customer. ;)

-just my 2cents-