How to Create and Promote Your Blog

How to Create and Promote
Your Blog

Dana VanDen Heuvel

www.marketingsavant.com
The MarketingSavant Group Twitter: @danavan

Why Do You Want to Blog?

1) Why are you interested in blogging?
2) Who is your audience? (Who are you trying to
impress/motivate/agitate?)
3) What objectives are you trying to meet?
4) How will we know when we get there? (metrics)
5) What’s the value of accomplishing your
objectives?


IF YOU CAN’T
PRODUCE QUALITY
CONTENT ON A
REGULAR BASIS THEN
DON’T START A BLOG.

The Thought Leadership
Blogging Equation

Competence, purpose and Strategic use of TLM tools Thought leaders and
core market and channels with media trusted advisors occupy
understanding inform the collaboration garner your the greatest share of mind
point of view & thought share voice in the industry among business buyers.
leadership platform. and spark the industry Share of mind predicts
Thought leaders outshine dialogue around your share of market. Thought
their competitors who ideas. Leadership Marketing
compete on price and As buyers seek out more steadily increases your
advertising. real market dialogue, SOV SOM with buyers,
is an increasingly important growing your share of
factor contributing to market.
marketplace success.

888.989.7771

Do You Have the Blogger Mindset?
1) They love what they do – energy & motivation
2) They have the drive to teach – no strings attached
3) They reach out and communicate – to everyone
4) They take risks with messaging – on the edge
5) They balance confidence with curiosity & learning –
learn from everyone
6) They put in the time today (TLM activities) for
tomorrow’s benefit
7) They never stop working, connecting and
communicating – not drip marketing, but constant
education


To be a blogger – Think and act like
a blogger
• Get into the habit of thinking like a blogger
– Create a blog idea file.
• Title, links,
• Carry a notebook or use your camera phone to start collecting ideas
on the go
• Save links to story ideas using Instapaper, del.icio.us or
your browser
• Create a Word doc and jot down ideas for posts
• Start creating great content to help launch your blog
• Practice blogging on your social networking page
• Draft posts offline in LiveWriter or Email


Supergenius Blogger Process

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Build Your “Blog Hub”

• One place where your
content is housed
• Contains real substance,
not just links
• “Connectable platform”
(Wordpress, Typepad)
• Your online home base

888.989.7771

Tune In! (It’s NOT ABOUT YOU!)

• Subscribe to content • Share content right from reader
• Consume feeds • Form a reader-based social
network

Create Great Content
• Instructional - Instructional posts tell people how to do • Inspirational - On the flip side to the angry rant (and not all
something. rants have to be angry) are inspirational and motivational
• Informational - This is one of the more common blog post pieces.
types where you simply give information on a topic. • Research - Research posts can take a lot of time but they can
• Reviews - Reviews come in all shapes and sizes and on also be well worth it if you come up with interesting
virtually every product or service you can think of. conclusions that inspire people to link up to you.
• Lists - One of the easiest ways to write a post is to make a list. • Collation Posts - These are a strange combination of research
• Interviews - Sometimes when you’ve run out of insightful and link posts.
things to say it might be a good idea to let someone else do • Prediction and Review Posts - We see a lot of these at the
the talking in an interview (or a guest post). end and start of the year where people do their ‘year in
• Case Studies - Case studies can provide an in-depth review’ posts and look at the year ahead and predict what
perspective. developments might happen in their niche in the coming
months.
• Profiles - Profile posts are similar to case studies but focus in
on a particular person. • Critique Posts - ‘Attack posts’ have always been a part of
blogging
• Link Posts - The good old ‘link post’ is a favorite of many
bloggers and is simply a matter of finding a quality post on • Debate - Debates do well on blogs and can either in an
another site to link to. organized fashion between two people, between a blogger
and ‘all comers’ or even between a blogger and…
• ‘Problem’ Posts - This is similar to a review post (above) but
focuses more upon the negatives of a product or service. • Hypothetical Posts - Pick a something that ‘could’ happen
down the track in your industry and begin to unpack what the
• Contrasting two options - Write a post contrasting two implications of it would be.
products, services or approaches that outlines the positives
and negatives of each choice. • Satirical - Well written satire or parody can be incredibly
powerful and is brilliant for generating links for your blog.
• Rant - Get passionate, stir yourself up, say what’s on your
mind and tell it like it is. Rants are great for starting discussion • Memes and Projects - write a post that somehow involves
and causing a little controversy. your readers and gets them to replicate it in some way.

888.989.7771

Share, Link and Guide
• What will your audience
find useful?
• Share competitors info –
it drives them nuts, and
gets them to link to you!
• Easy, time-conscious way
to stay relevant without
creating original content

888.989.7771

Make Your Content Work
(Harder) For You

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Map it Out

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Leave Tangible Digital Artifacts

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Syndicate & Synchronize

888.989.7771

Thought Leadership Blogger
Indium Corporation
• 25% reduction in marketing spend
• Major account wins
• Entire organization involved
in the ‘community’


Thought Leadership Blogger
Indium Corporation

“[Being a Thought Leader] is
being considered the best, most
authoritative, trusted source. It
means being the “go to” people.
It means being given the first
look, being invited into a
development project and asked
for advice. It means being the
organization that others MUST
HAVE involved with a project.
And it all leads to increased sales,
profits, and image or it simply
didn’t matter..”
Rick Short, Indium www.marketingsavant.com

A Day in the Life of a
Supergenius Blogger
• One to two blog posts
• 3-8 Twitter updates
• Listen (read) top 100 –
1000 RSS articles from
your feeds
• Share 15-20 articles via
Google Reader
• Comment on 1-3 key blog
posts from peers
• 3-8 Delicious bookmarks
• Facebook, LinkedIn &
other network activity

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Supergenius vs. The Other Guys

Supergenius Blogger Other Guy
• Reads everything through • Jumps around to websites
RSS & email to read content (loses 30
minutes)
• Posts once and publishes to
many outlets (dlvr.it, • Publishes via individual web
interfaces (loses 15
Posterous, linked accounts) minutes)
• Shares content via Google • Manually Tweets out links
Reader from articles & blog posts
• Leaves tangible digital (loses 20 mintues)
artifacts • Slurps up others crap as
their own (waste of time)


Supergenius Blogger Toolkit
• Google Reader
• Wordpress
• Google Analytics
• Posterous
• Instapaper
• Delicious
• Twitter
• Dlvr.it account
• Windows LiveWriter or
Scribefire
• Mindmapping software
• Industry newsletters
via: WWW.VIRTU-ASSIST.COM

888.989.7771

Remember…

• Start your blog with a purpose
• Produce quality content on a regular basis
• Follow a plan to vary your types of posting
• Follow a process to ensure make blogging high
impact
• Participate to position yourself as a thought leader in
your market space
• Play nice. This is supposed to be fun 


After-Event Slides & Resources

• The slides and resource links are available
electronically after the event:

www.marketingsavant.com/supergenius


How to Create and
Promote Your Blog


How to Create and Promote Your Blog

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