This document provides guidance on starting and maintaining a successful company blog. It recommends focusing on education, entertainment and information rather than promotion. Key aspects to plan include the blog's purpose, target audience, topics, primary writer and participation. It also discusses establishing tone, discipline, best practices, content ideas, guest blogging and practicing what you preach through regular writing. Tools like an editorial calendar can help manage the process. Workshops can train writers on guidelines, workflows and tone. The goal is to create engaging, valuable content that readers will want to consume.

1. Workshop

2. Become a publisher
• Information over
Promotion
• Know over sell
• Editorial Calendar
• Flexible approach
• Produce content that
focuses on
education, entertainme
nt, and/or information
that ultimately yields
awareness

3. Planning •
•
What purpose does the blog serve?
What do you want it to impact?
• What are you going to write about?
• Who will champion the blog and serve as primary writer?
• Who will read it?
• Why will they read it?
• Who will participate?

4. More Planning
• Tone of Voice
– What’s your internal
tone of voice?
• Discipline
– How are you going to
discipline yourself and
your colleagues to
deliver
• Best Practice
– How are you going to
instill best practice

5. Nurturing your writers
• This is all about relationships
• The snowball effect
That’s You!
Find your content Ask them to
stars and come and Create a Offline regular Invite the
Create a workshop incentives Let the whole
those already help (part of unified get-togethers wider
and invite them along business know
engaged personally your audit) Comms point audience

6. Tools to lead the charge

7. Content &Curation

8. Editorial Calendar
• Template
• Set yourself
communication
reminders

9. Workshops
• Why
• Incentivise
• How to use the tools
• Talking them through
the playbook
• Best practices

10. • Not Policy!
• Encouraging
• Short to the point
Guidelines
• Specific and contextual
Playbook
• Learning experience
• Workflow
• Tone of voice

11. Writing good copy
• Krugs third law of usability: Get rid of ½ the
words on the page and then get rid of ½ of
what’s left.
• People don’t read online they scan – at the
beginning

12. • Ideas
• Do your research
• Write headlines that promise value
• Begin with a gripping lead
• Sub headers
• It can be short
• Imagery
• Marmite and Controversy
• Value over promotion
• Personality
• Keywords
• Engage
Writing

13. To get them
kick started
• Opinion based on current news (Guernsey Tax Regime Set For EU Review )
• Events you will attend or are attending
• Commentary on another post or community conversation
• Customer stories
• Competitor news
• Guides
• Give me some ideas
• It does not have to be a blog post in the traditional sense

14. Example
http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/11/0
7/did-google-just-bury-twitter-with-its-
pages-launch/Short to the point
• Asks a question (Catchy headline)
• Scanable
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/10-
top-business-blogs-and-why-they-are-
successful/
• Imagery
• Research done
• Top 10

15. Engaging guest bloggers
• 3rd Parties
– Google, twitter searches
• Take a look at your comments and
responses
• Write a guest blogger post
• Advertise it
• Make it easy
• Show the benefits
• Interview?
• Don’t ask for too much

16. Practice what you preach
• Write for 30
mins every
day
• Jot down
every post
idea you
have

17. About Me
Twitter @brandjoe
Blog brandjoe.com
linkedin.com/in/brandjoe
slideshare.net/brandjoe
facebook.com/brandjoe
foursquare.com/brandjoe
flickr.com/photos/brandjoe
youtube.com/brandjoe
Digital Planner & Creative Type
Occasional Speaker & Trainer, Strategy, Semi Literate
Writer. I'm down with:
Tech, Design, Basketball, Snow, Hiphop& my Fam

18. Image credits
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bwalsh/51473374/sizes/o/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/93352468@N00/5399705800/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/76074333@N00/317952268/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/spodzone/2696058961/sizes/l/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vpasson/3867480044/sizes/l/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/92435716@N00/61613238/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fatmandy/4221136071/sizes/l/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/playingwithpsp/3031647963/sizes/l/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bezembinder/5729288413/sizes/l/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/omegaman/477866450/sizes/o/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bookgrl/433818001/sizes/l/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hawaii/2089328125/sizes/o/in/photostream/