Marketing strategies and tactics have multiplied in the past decade, due largely to the Internet becoming a bona fide marketing/media channel. One tactic starting to become popular is blogging. This post explores the rationale behind writing a blog to promote a company or brand.
As with all marketing tactics, a blogging plan should be developed within the overall marketing strategy, that dictates the online marketing plan and specifically a social media strategy. Everything is integrated and a blog is an ideal platform to create content for use in other SM channels such as Twitter (tweet announcements of your latest post), Facebook (link a post to your Facebook Wall/photo album/etc.), or YouTube (support a post topic with a video). A blog also boosts SEM through an increased online presence.
Blogs require regular posts, usually daily or weekly. A blog post must focus on one topic and provide insights, opinions, links and other relevant material on that topic. The benefit of a blog is that it creates a dialogue with readers so the author of the blog can learn what people think about the topic. They are a simple and effective research tool to tap into the minds of people who care enough about your company/brand to respond to the post.
A blog about a company or a brand would be aimed at existing and potential customers. It can describe interesting features of the company/brand, behind-the-scenes information, anecdotal stories supplied by customers, or news about upcoming launches or updates. In fact anything that gives the public something more than they would normally find on a company web site or an advertisement. Often they are quite conversational in tone and not ‘hard sell’; from this point of view it can serve as key element in customer relationship management.
Writing a blog requires copywriting skills. It should not be left to a junior staff member – or the CEO/CMO who has grand visions of his/her own writing skills. Think of it as if you were publishing a magazine and employ professionals to handle the briefing, writing, editing and publication of the blog.
The research is starting to indicate how much blogging is helping SMEs to market themselves. A 2009 study of 1500 clients by HubSpot revealed some startling statistics; read about the results here.
I found a delightful example of a small town cookie company that was literally saved by a blog. Do you know of any company/brand blogs that are achieving success in some way? Or is there a blog that is not performing too well? Please share your experiences and examples here.
I read the company blog of 37signals.com and have to say that although their topics may not be relevant to other people, their approach is something a majority of company blogs should follow.
The two things that sets it apart, is that they have more than one blogger, with their own personality, but they still achieve the same tone and secondly they never peddle their own products, just give useful tips on how they solve business dilemmas.
I believe this has sent their sales skyrocketing as well as their readership.