Blogs
Blogs are defined by their format: a series of entries posted to a single page in reverse-chronological order. They act an online journals that are frequently updated and most often used as a public destination for your brand to share its news, events and other interesting content.
Key Characteristics
Lots of Functionality Blogs are easily customizable with plug-ins that can be used to pull in all types of information to your blog, including video or photo feeds. Because of the great deal of functionality they provide, they can act as a great home base for all of your media content. They can also be set up to allow multiple writers to contribute to the one blog. Inexpensive & easy to set up Popular blogging platforms such as Wordpress, Blogger and Tumblr are all free to use and easy to set up. Require regular detailed posting Blogs do require a certain amount of commitment as posts must be made regularly and are traditionally require more detail than posts on other social media platforms such as Twitter or Facebook. Informal & conversational Blogs offer a more human, opinion driven form of information than a standard website. |
Credible sources of information Blogging has now matured as a phenomenon to cross into a number of different areas, and can carry a lot of sway. Blogs can be a great way of establishing a sense of credibility for your brand by sharing insightful advice on your area of expertise. Vibrant blogging Communities 1% of people create, 9% interact with that media, and 90% just passively consume it. Blogs already have vibrant communities that exist around a range of topics that you can tap into, and these numbers demonstrate why it is imperative to build good relationships with that 1% of creators. Blogs are a great way to connect with the top influencers in your market, and a single relationship with the right blogger can lead to thousands of instant relationships with targeted readers who fully trust that particular source. SEO advantages Blogs can help a brand’s rankings in search results because they interlink extensively, making them very SEO friendly |
Top 10 Marketing Tips for Blogs
1. Post consistently
Set readers’ expectations on the regularity of posts, and keep meeting those expectations by posting consistently. 2. Post quality content Establish yourself as a credible source of information on a topic to show readers why your content is worth engaging with. Expert advice in niche audiences can attract and engage large amounts of readers. 3. Don’t broadcast. Don’t create a corporate blog that merely republishes press releases. Use a conversational tone to create a two-way conversation. 4. Don’t self-promote. Be interesting and engaging. Don’t blog about your product, but instead share information and thoughts on subjects that will be of interest to your target audience. For example, advice about business, design or editorials. This gives value to your audience while indirectly increasing awareness of your brand without overtly promoting it. Captivating your audience with engaging content will sell your product better than simply promoting your product.
5. Provide a ‘Behind the Scenes’ Look The corporate world has discovered that blogs can be a great way for organizations to get information about what it does on the inside to the outside world, effectively contributing to community building efforts and exposing positive corporate cultures and practices. |
6. Break your own news
Blogs are great for you to break your own news, both good and bad. As opposed to releasing a stiff press release and hoping journalists will interpret it nicely, if you break the news yourself on your blog, you can directly control how the public receives it. A great example of this is the Telstra Exchange blog, which regularly updates users when there’s problems with their service in an honest and upfront manner. 7. Connect with Influential Bloggers Research shows that 70% of bloggers talk about brands on their blog (Technorati State of the Blogosphere Report, 2011) so even if you don’t have your own blog, reaching out to the top influencers and creating friendly relationships them can ensure your brand is blogged about in a positive light. 8. Link extensively Linking extensively within your posts makes your site very SEO friendly. Blogging communities are also generally very reciprocal, and if you link to someone else’s blog within your post it’s likely that they will at some point link back to yours too. 9. Customise Customise your blog with plug-ins so that you can share various types of content in it including images and video 10. Market Your Blog Drive traffic to your blog by promoting it on various other social media platforms. For example, tweeting the link to a new blog post. |
Case Study
The House Historian
The House Historian is a real estate company’s blog that employs a creative writer to travel to different houses in the world, and blog about their history. This is a great example of a company who might not have had daily news to post about every day, but instead found an engaging topic to post about that was indirectly related to their product and would engage their audience. The content is unique and interesting, and creates extra value for the reader because instead of just selling bricks and mortar, the company is now also selling stories.
The House Historian is a real estate company’s blog that employs a creative writer to travel to different houses in the world, and blog about their history. This is a great example of a company who might not have had daily news to post about every day, but instead found an engaging topic to post about that was indirectly related to their product and would engage their audience. The content is unique and interesting, and creates extra value for the reader because instead of just selling bricks and mortar, the company is now also selling stories.
Platforms
Blogger
Blogger is a popular and free service owned by Google that is extremely easy to use and set up. Blogs on this service generally have a more casual design style than Wordpress. Blogger can also support up to 100 users , so if your blog grows beyond single editorship you can expand contributors without any hassle. |
Tumblr
Tumblr is an interesting fusion between a fully-fledged blog and a Twitter feed, focused on short and frequent posts that are normally longer than Twitter updates, but not as involved or formal as a regular blog post. It traditionally has a digital media focus and is great for sharing images and video. Users can reblog the posts of others which is particularly useful when they feature your product or event, and the wise use of hashtags to describe your content can make it easily searchable. Overly text heavy posts are often skimmed over in favour of visuals, so be sure to feature images and videos in order for posts to be noticeable when using this service. Tumblr is a convenient option for people who aren’t looking to commit to a blog as an involved and time-consuming project. |
Wordpress
Wordpress is a blogging service that has a big following and a huge amount of functionality. It is slightly more fiddly to set up than others, but if your brand has an in-house web technician they shouldn’t have a problem with it. It is best suited to corporate companies as the style is very professional, and it is also a very scalable solution that allows you to do everything from maintain a single blog, with a single user, to an entire stable of blogs with multiple users all overseen by a primary administrator. |