When considering whether or not to set up a marketing blog, and how to do it, there are several factors you should look at.
Audience
Let’s say your initial audience is the universe of people you normally market to – your existing and potential customers. Presumably you know them pretty well. Ask: will they be interested in a blog? Will they respond to it? Will they benefit from it? If the answer to any of these is ‘No,’ a blog may not be worth the time and effort.
Frequency
How often can you commit to posting a new blog? Some very active sites post them twice a week. Once a week, or once every two weeks, are more common intervals. An interval of once a month is getting a little long, given how short everybody’s attention span is these days. Longer than once a month? You might reconsider…
Subject Matter
Can you reasonably expect to have a wide and varied range of subjects to post blogs about? Clearly, this depends on what business you’re in, since the blog has to be rooted in that business and showcase your competence and leadership. A fast-moving, high-tech business is going to have more blog topics than, say, the soybean harvesting business. This question goes hand-in-hand with frequency. Ask your colleagues, since a range of perspectives within your organization can help supply variety to your postings.
Writing Skills
Your blog should be well-written. You’d be amazed how many of them aren’t. We’re not saying that you have to put in the level of effort you would for a marketing brochure – the blog has to be a task you can do easily and regularly – but if writing doesn’t come naturally to you, maybe somebody should ghost-write the blog. Every misspelling, grammatical error or use of ‘it’s’ when you mean ‘its’ is going to reflect on you and your organization.
Length and Tone
Keep it short. For any given post, get the essence across in two or three paragraphs if you can. If possible, answer any responses you get in two or three sentences. If a post is too long, your readers’ eyes will glaze over and they’ll start skipping paragraphs. A good blog exchange goes back and forth like an energetic conversation.
Don’t market. A blog is an exchange of news, information and opinion, hopefully lively, maybe even provocative. You want your readers to come away thinking, ‘Boy, she really knows her stuff!’ – not, ‘Boy, he really had a lot to say about their latest release…’ It’s fine to put in a good word about your product or service, but make it a subset of the news, information and opinion.
Promote it.
You need to commit to promoting your blog now that you have created it. Take every opportunity to mention your blog…on your website, business card, and your paper and email correspondence. Post your comments on other related blogs.
Make it easy for search engines to find you. Think about the key words and phrases you would use to find information about your topic on the Internet, and then incorporate as many of those as possible in your blog.
Consider using targeted direct mail (either paper or electronic) to increase readership. Send an e-mail or postcard that announces your blog and provides a sample of the type of content you provide. Make sure your mailing includes useful tips or resources and a call to action. This call to action could be a contest with a prize for the reader providing the right response to a question posed on the blog. Once people have visited, and like what they see, they will return.
Any Responses?
The essence of blogs is the give-and-take between bloggers and readers. That’s what makes them stimulating, and keeps bringing people back and maybe forwarding the blog to others – not just what you say, but how others are responding to you. If you go for four or five blogs with no responses, you’re probably doing something wrong. Revisit how you are promoting your blog.
Maybe your blogs are too long. Maybe your topics aren’t interesting enough. Maybe you’re blogging to the wrong audience. Or maybe blogging just isn’t the right avenue for you to pursue at this time.
Pam Sullivan is president of Sullivan Creative, Newton, MA.
Network
