Let’s face it, no one really wants to read your blog. Honestly, the blogosphere is saturated. At last count, Technorati was tracking over 80 million blogs. In addition to this fact, company blogs oftentimes are used more for promotional purposes rather than building an actual audience and readership. In many instances, I’ve found press releases on company blogs. There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach, but it’s akin to sending prospective clients a press release instead of a product brochure. It’s not going to work.
In order to make all blogging efforts worthwhile, it is important to understand that simply setting up a nice blog and posting a few articles a week will not suffice. The long and short of it is that your blog needs to stand for something. It needs to have a voice of its own, communicate a powerful message and engage readers on issues they genuinely care about. Additionally, your blog needs to provide readers a reason to revisit and revisit often.
There are many tactical elements that can be deployed to attract visitors. You can write great headlines, make the content a scanable list, use targeted keywords, strategically use pictures and multi-media elements, et cetera. However, in order to drive targeted traffic and generate value from this readership, it is important to have a strategic vision for the blog.
Here are some ideas to think about as you and your company embarks on your blogging journey.
- Write edgy, perhaps even a little gritty posts about the realities of consuming your products/services.
- Encourage readers to submit stories and pictures of them using your products/services.
- Develop a regular picture series. As an example take a look at “The View From Your Window” where readers are invited to send in their photos of their view from a window.
- Dispense practical advice, tips, tricks and lists about getting around your industry. For example, if you are writing a cell phone company blog, why not share ways to save cell minutes?
- Become the premier source of information on anything related to your industry. If you can accomplish this, you will become a reporters’ magnet and be quoted in the local paper on any conceivable issue relating to your industry.
In addition to developing a distinct blog voice, you should also reach out to the blogging community. Blogging is half about writing your stories and half about engaging other blogs and writers. Comment on other blogs, offer to write guest posts, do a blog review of their blogs and invite them to write on your blog. Ultimately, this level of networking will afford you the opportunity to draw more visitors and achieve your marketing goals for your blog. Otherwise, in all honesty, no one will read your blog!
Image source: gullevek via Flickr (shared under creative commons license)
Tags: blogging, blogs, company blogs
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