Blogging at the heart of your content strategy

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[show activity on http://en.wordpress.com/stats/]If there’s this much activity, or competition, why even do it? How can your blog make a dent? Vast majority of blogs won’t compete with yours in ANY WAYYou’ve got a perspective worth sharing—if you don’t you’ve got bigger problems than this!

They don’t constrain themselves to jargon or self-promotion. They’re adventurous, take risks, ponder important questions, and excite readers.

91% of the most experienced social media marketers in 2011 planned on increasing their use of blogging in 2012 (Awareness, Inc., 2012)The 2011 Social Media Matters Study found…53% of American online population trust blogs as information source 88% of active blog readers trust blogs as information sourceBlog readers prefer blogs to Facebook when it comes to:Finding new trends & ideasFinding out about new products Help develop new skillsHelp solve a problem Make a purchase decision

Success in blogging takes many forms. Set goals that make sense for your business and evaluate your blogging efforts against them. Blogging is great for awareness, but can directly influence things like conversion, too.

I call this the Kim Kardashian approach to blogging. These content types have 3 things in common:They provide little value or utilityMost people ignore them, and many people HATE themThey don’t belong on your blogIf this kind of blogging worked, I would do it in a heartbeat. But all the evidence I’ve seen sends one signal clearly: it’s a waste of time.

To get the most out of blogging, you need to answer the right question. Most companies start with the wrong question. It sets them up for failure. Asking this is kind of like saying, “I want to be the best rock band in Reno.”

Now you’re asking the right question. Blogging isn’t the goal, it’s just the medium. To extend the analogy, it’s like asking: “How can we make music that people just can’t live without?”The right question changes everything.

Once you decide to become indispensable to your audience, you start filling in the blanks.

Helping people live and work better Explaining concepts, trendsHealthy balance between your current audience, and the audience you want to have (e.g., VPs now, but CEOs are your target)What your audience cares about, and what connects them to each other and your company Being three-dimensional. Being human, conversational, fallible, approachable, accessible. Ego capital. The value you get when you promote or feature someone else’s point of view or work. They’ll share it, link to it, etc. Frequency Focus Contextual CTAsCuration – featuring great 3rd party content, giving full credit to author Media mix Viewpoint diversity

Single metrics never tell the whole story. Here’s an example from my blogging experience. Dug in to frequent search terms leading to our blog, found that “Hangover Man Purse” was in the top 20. There had been a blog post in early 2010—before I was there—about how one of our clients made the man purse in that movie.It actually generated a decent amount of traffic. By that metric, I should start posting more like it. But other numbers told a different story. Bounce rate was sky high. Time on page was extremely low. People were looking to buy the man purse, hitting our blog, and leaving when they realized they couldn’t buy it from us. This traffic is of 0 value to us. Next: A few company blogs that put these ideas to work.

Behance built a network for creative professionals to showcase their work, and for companies to find creative talent. That’s what they sell. Their vision: “To Empower The Creative World to Make Ideas Happen”They decided to make their blog all about making ideas happen. Productivity tips, project management advice, videos about getting more bang for your mental buck.

HubSpot sells marketing software to small businesses. So their blog helps small business get more out of marketing technologies. Each post is followed by a hyper-relevant call-to-action that relates to the content of the post.

SEOmoz sells SEO tools and analysis. Their blog is all about improving SEO. They let readers contribute posts to a separate blog, and feature the best ones.Great use of video: White Board Fridays tackles a technical problem by solving it step by step on a white board.

Glassdoor is an employer reviews site for job seekers. They collect a lot of data about companies, and share what they discover. There’s a wealth of job-seeking tips and advice.

All about what connects their customers: the outdoors, adventure, travel and the environment.

Company that makes ostensibly scissors blogs about what customers are passionate about—crafting. They invite crafting enthusiasts to join the Fiskateers and contribute.

Takes the focus off the products and helps consumers solve problems. Guest posts from professional organizers.

Ego capital is a powerful concept that shouldn’t be abused. Whenever you interview someone, quote them, link to them, include them in a top 10 list……it makes them look and feel good. They’re likely to share it, link to it, comment on it. The ideal: find an influential expert with a large following in your space

Facebook exec spoke at our event. I quickly recapped his talk, and a colleague of mine sent it to him. Facebook tweeted it and shared it on their own wall. Attended a great talk about a new study done by the NY Times. Raced across the street to the coffee shop, put together a post, and published it. They tweeted it, and drove a lot of traffic. Get there first, let them know that you’ve included them.

Curation threads things together. Makes something greater than the sum of its parts. Connects things that should be connected, but weren’t yet. Adds credibility and diversity to a story.

Best curation examples are media destinations with a lot of content. Goals include niche and category thought leadership. Nokia selects the best articles about creativity, innovation and tech, previews them on the blog. CMO.com is Adobe’s project. It features content that CMOs should read.

Blogging at the heart of your content strategy

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Blogging at the heart of your content strategy