Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Facebook Pages for B2B Social Media Marketing
Yesterday in Auckland, NZ I gave an all day workshop to 150 marketing and communications professionals on Social Media Content Marketing & Strategy at Social Media Junction. I’m used to giving workshops to 20-30 people so it was an interesting and enjoyable experience with such a large group. (Thanks to Bullet PR staff who are amazing).
One of the questions that came up was whether B2B companies are successfully using Facebook Fan pages. I shared a few of our client Fan pages like Marketo & McKesson Medical Imaging (forgetting to mention our own completely) but wanted to share a few more examples here.
While it’s true that the most popular Facebook Fan Pages are for consumer products and brands like Coca Cola (18.2m Fans), Starbucks (17.5m Fans) and Oreo (14.1m Fans), there are many B2B companies successfully using Facebook to engage with prospects, customers and employees. Here are a few good examples:
Symantec has a modest number of fans but does make effective use of a landing page that incorporates video, poll, cross posts from Twitter and news all in the welcome tab. The Wall has a fair amount of engagement as well. I think what they’re doing with Facebook is what many B2B companies could reasonably do. Especially if they’re active in other social media channels. They Symantec Facebook page makes a good case for the investment in a custom FBML landing page.
Cisco doesn’t use a landing page for people that aren’t fans yet, but is certainly leveraging Facebook as a promotional vehicle to engage with customers as you can see from the SuperFan Spotlight promotion. Engagement on the wall is pretty good and they’ve certainly attracted a bit of attention with 116,429 Fans. Cisco is smartly cross linking to their other social channels including their social media hub, blogs, Twitter and newsroom. Watch Cisco’s overall social media efforts and you’ll find some great ideas for your own B2B online marketing efforts.
My personal bias aside, for an online marketing agency, I’d have to say that TopRank’s Facebook page (which is technically a page for the blog) is a pretty good example of a B2B Fan page for an agency. One year ago, we had 54 Fans and today we’re at 5,335. That’s almost 1000% growth without any contests, advertising, apps or promotions outside of adding the FB social plugin to the sidebar of this blog. We’ll be doing a lot more in 2011 with promotions and the FB page though.
The Facebook Fan page serves as a spoke in our Hub and Spoke Social Media & SEO publishing model. Content is shared manually from the web at large and from our blog to Fans on Facebook. The purpose of the page is to provide a place on Facebook where our audience spends time consuming business information.
While B2B isn’t what Facebook is known for, judging by the rate of interest, there’s certainly an appetite for using Facebook as a source of business related news, information and interaction. Our connections with people on Facebook are an extension of our connections on the blog. Together and in conjunction with other online and offline content marketing, they serve to generate awareness, interest, credibility and thought leadership for the TopRank Online Marketing brand. We could be doing A LOT MORE and we will.
Obviously, there are many, many other great B2B Facebook Fan pages out there. Which are your favorites? Please submit links and why in the comments. We’d love to curate a list of the best B2B Fan Pages for you.
For more ideas on how your B2B company can use Facebook, check out this post from Social Media B2B.
One of the questions that came up was whether B2B companies are successfully using Facebook Fan pages. I shared a few of our client Fan pages like Marketo & McKesson Medical Imaging (forgetting to mention our own completely) but wanted to share a few more examples here.
While it’s true that the most popular Facebook Fan Pages are for consumer products and brands like Coca Cola (18.2m Fans), Starbucks (17.5m Fans) and Oreo (14.1m Fans), there are many B2B companies successfully using Facebook to engage with prospects, customers and employees. Here are a few good examples:
Symantec has a modest number of fans but does make effective use of a landing page that incorporates video, poll, cross posts from Twitter and news all in the welcome tab. The Wall has a fair amount of engagement as well. I think what they’re doing with Facebook is what many B2B companies could reasonably do. Especially if they’re active in other social media channels. They Symantec Facebook page makes a good case for the investment in a custom FBML landing page.
Cisco doesn’t use a landing page for people that aren’t fans yet, but is certainly leveraging Facebook as a promotional vehicle to engage with customers as you can see from the SuperFan Spotlight promotion. Engagement on the wall is pretty good and they’ve certainly attracted a bit of attention with 116,429 Fans. Cisco is smartly cross linking to their other social channels including their social media hub, blogs, Twitter and newsroom. Watch Cisco’s overall social media efforts and you’ll find some great ideas for your own B2B online marketing efforts.
My personal bias aside, for an online marketing agency, I’d have to say that TopRank’s Facebook page (which is technically a page for the blog) is a pretty good example of a B2B Fan page for an agency. One year ago, we had 54 Fans and today we’re at 5,335. That’s almost 1000% growth without any contests, advertising, apps or promotions outside of adding the FB social plugin to the sidebar of this blog. We’ll be doing a lot more in 2011 with promotions and the FB page though.
The Facebook Fan page serves as a spoke in our Hub and Spoke Social Media & SEO publishing model. Content is shared manually from the web at large and from our blog to Fans on Facebook. The purpose of the page is to provide a place on Facebook where our audience spends time consuming business information.
While B2B isn’t what Facebook is known for, judging by the rate of interest, there’s certainly an appetite for using Facebook as a source of business related news, information and interaction. Our connections with people on Facebook are an extension of our connections on the blog. Together and in conjunction with other online and offline content marketing, they serve to generate awareness, interest, credibility and thought leadership for the TopRank Online Marketing brand. We could be doing A LOT MORE and we will.
Obviously, there are many, many other great B2B Facebook Fan pages out there. Which are your favorites? Please submit links and why in the comments. We’d love to curate a list of the best B2B Fan Pages for you.
For more ideas on how your B2B company can use Facebook, check out this post from Social Media B2B.
Social Media Advertising on Twitter
The list of provocative linkbait goes on and on but savvy practitioners realize that few things just die out. They change. Like advertising.
Traditional ad dollars are most certainly moving to digital and as companies look for more ways to take advantage of technology to better connect with customers, social media is becoming the new internet.
Advertising as part of the social experience vs. being interruptive combined with the ability to measure brings many opportunities for businesses to grow their reach, brand influence and ability to engage.
Our post about social media advertising yesterday was well placed with Twitter’s move to make buying ads there easier. Below is a roundup of tips and resources for learning more about advertising on Twitter.
Twitter: Probably one of the shiniest of social media objects the past year, Twitter has 175 million registered users with 95M tweets are written per day. According to a post by Danny Sullivan, Twitter Does 19 Billion Searches Per Month, Beating Yahoo & Bing.
Image:Twitter.com
Testing “Promoted Tweets” has given way to a mix of 3 advertising options on Twitter as of yesterday: Promoted Tweets, Promoted Trends and Promoted Accounts. Each advertising option on Twitter offers a Dashboard plus there’s a Timeline of Activity view. Budgets you can pick from on the inquiry form range from under $10k to over $100k per month so this is not a small business offering per se.
Image: Twitter.com
To learn more about how involvement on Twitter might work for your company, check out the case studies from Best Buy, jetBlue and others.
Since Twitter just launched a form for Advertising inquiries yesterday, there are no ad specific best practices, but you can get more info here: Information for Advertisers.
In the meantime, here are general Twitter best practices:
Share. Share photos and behind the scenes info about your business. Even better, give a glimpse of developing projects and events. Users come to Twitter to get and share the latest, so give it to them!Listen. Regularly monitor the comments about your company, brand, and products.Ask. Ask questions of your followers to glean valuable insights and show that you are listening.Respond. Respond to compliments and feedback in real timeReward. Tweet updates about special offers, discounts and time-sensitive deals.Demonstrate wider leadership and know-how. Reference articles and links about the bigger picture as it relates to your business.Champion your stakeholders. Retweet and reply publicly to great tweets posted by your followers and customers.Establish the right voice. Twitter users tend to prefer a direct, genuine, and of course, a likable tone from your business, but think about your voice as you Tweet. How do you want your business to appear to the Twitter community?
It’s early days for details on Twitter Advertising resources, so check out this popular post on 5 Steps to Build a Twitter Marketing Strategy and this piece on Mashable by Dallas Lawrence: How Companies Should Approach the New Twitter Advertising Model.
To show Twitter you’re interested in starting with their advertising offering, visit the form.
Due to Twitter’s rollout of the Advertising options last night, I made this a dedicated post to Twitter Advertising.
TIPS & Training on How to Improve Your SEO Copywriting
Content is royalty in the online marketing world whether it’s for search, social or email. Copywriting skills are essential for effective content and provide marketers a distinct, competitive advantage. I’ve asked one of our Account Managers, Ken Horst, to check out a SEO copywriting course to share with our readers. Please welcome him in his first post to Online Marketing Blog.
Like many experienced online marketers, I’ve been writing copy for websites and blogs for many years. But like any good internet marketer, I’m always looking for ways to improve my skills. Recently I came across a course on SEO copywriting that caught my fancy and it offers certification. Two things I’m interested in, becoming a better writer and getting transferable credit for doing so! I started the SEO Copywriting course about a month ago and this is a review of my experience so far.
The course is presented by Heather Lloyd-Martin, a 20 year veteran of copywriting and president of Success Works, an SEO copywriting company. It’s easy to understand her passion for the topic when you listen to her podcasts or participate in the twice monthly live coaching calls. Heather’s enthusiasm and depth of knowledge are two of the things that make this course both enjoyable and useful. I never thought I would say that about a class I was taking.
The course is designed for both the busy professional and the beginning blogger. As an experienced blogger who writes as part of my job, I am already being reminded of solid principles that I had learned long ago but forgot. Every professional in every industry would agree that it’s a good idea to get back to basics every once in awhile.
In addition to some of the solid basics I am relearning, Heather has also forced us to take a step back in our copy writing process and begin with a SWOT analysis of the company, product or service we are writing about. After that she had us developing personas of our target market. All this before we even started to get into the topic of writing.
I wanted to dive in and start writing right away, but as we learned early on, there is writing and there is writing well. If as SEO copywriters, we are interested in the latter, we need to build a solid understanding of our readers first.
As much as I hated slowing down for this part of the course, I started to realize how many times I put out less than awesome copy because I hadn’t taken the time to understand my audience. Thanks to Heather and her SEO Copywriting course, I won’t be making this mistake again anytime soon.
Three solid tips I’ve gotten from the course so far are;
Study your competition - Do a search in Google for your most relevant keyword and examine the copy of the top ten sites. Things to notice are: Do you like the writing? Why or why not?Who is their target market? Is it the same as yours?What do they offer that you don’t? Conversely, what do you offer that they don’t?Does the site “feel” authoritative? If so, why do you think that is?Are there articles, blogs or product reviews?Conduct a SWOT analysis of your product or service – Knowing your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats will highlight opportunities for topics, headlines, categories and content.Master your messaging - Start by brainstorming at least ten reasons why someone should do business with you or buy from you. This will generate some great ideas for content.
On a more technical note, the course is laid out in 8 modules followed by a final exam. Each module consists of a workbook, in the form of a PDF, a corresponding podcast, and included in many modules are forms you can use to keep track of your work and manage the tasks she assigns. In addition, there are two live coaching calls each month where you can ask questions and learn from the answers to other participant’s questions. I’ve also found Heather and her team to be very response to emails which was a pleasant surprise.
As a student, I also get access to the SEO Copywriting forum which offers feedback and insights from both Heather and the other students, a great resource. All in all my first month in the program has been very educational and enjoyable as the self-paced learning is perfect for my busy life. Lastly, I’m getting a bonus that I didn’t anticipate; this course has really got me excited about writing again!!
Like many experienced online marketers, I’ve been writing copy for websites and blogs for many years. But like any good internet marketer, I’m always looking for ways to improve my skills. Recently I came across a course on SEO copywriting that caught my fancy and it offers certification. Two things I’m interested in, becoming a better writer and getting transferable credit for doing so! I started the SEO Copywriting course about a month ago and this is a review of my experience so far.
The course is presented by Heather Lloyd-Martin, a 20 year veteran of copywriting and president of Success Works, an SEO copywriting company. It’s easy to understand her passion for the topic when you listen to her podcasts or participate in the twice monthly live coaching calls. Heather’s enthusiasm and depth of knowledge are two of the things that make this course both enjoyable and useful. I never thought I would say that about a class I was taking.
The course is designed for both the busy professional and the beginning blogger. As an experienced blogger who writes as part of my job, I am already being reminded of solid principles that I had learned long ago but forgot. Every professional in every industry would agree that it’s a good idea to get back to basics every once in awhile.
In addition to some of the solid basics I am relearning, Heather has also forced us to take a step back in our copy writing process and begin with a SWOT analysis of the company, product or service we are writing about. After that she had us developing personas of our target market. All this before we even started to get into the topic of writing.
I wanted to dive in and start writing right away, but as we learned early on, there is writing and there is writing well. If as SEO copywriters, we are interested in the latter, we need to build a solid understanding of our readers first.
As much as I hated slowing down for this part of the course, I started to realize how many times I put out less than awesome copy because I hadn’t taken the time to understand my audience. Thanks to Heather and her SEO Copywriting course, I won’t be making this mistake again anytime soon.
Three solid tips I’ve gotten from the course so far are;
Study your competition - Do a search in Google for your most relevant keyword and examine the copy of the top ten sites. Things to notice are: Do you like the writing? Why or why not?Who is their target market? Is it the same as yours?What do they offer that you don’t? Conversely, what do you offer that they don’t?Does the site “feel” authoritative? If so, why do you think that is?Are there articles, blogs or product reviews?Conduct a SWOT analysis of your product or service – Knowing your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats will highlight opportunities for topics, headlines, categories and content.Master your messaging - Start by brainstorming at least ten reasons why someone should do business with you or buy from you. This will generate some great ideas for content.
On a more technical note, the course is laid out in 8 modules followed by a final exam. Each module consists of a workbook, in the form of a PDF, a corresponding podcast, and included in many modules are forms you can use to keep track of your work and manage the tasks she assigns. In addition, there are two live coaching calls each month where you can ask questions and learn from the answers to other participant’s questions. I’ve also found Heather and her team to be very response to emails which was a pleasant surprise.
As a student, I also get access to the SEO Copywriting forum which offers feedback and insights from both Heather and the other students, a great resource. All in all my first month in the program has been very educational and enjoyable as the self-paced learning is perfect for my busy life. Lastly, I’m getting a bonus that I didn’t anticipate; this course has really got me excited about writing again!!
Tips on Video: B2B Facebook, Social ROI & Repurposing Social Content
While traveling recently in New Zealand and a short stay in Sydney, Australia I shot a few videos offering social media marketing tips. Check them out below and you can also view many other tips videos and interviews we’ve done with search and social media marketing experts on the TopRank Online MARKETING YouTube Channel.
TIPS on Social Media ROI from Sydney Australia near the famous Opera House & Sydney Harbour Bridge. Sorry about the wind, it messed with the audio a bit. I need to get a Zi8 and a microphone!
Common B2B Facebook Myths from Rangitoto Island, off Auckland, New Zealand. (From an old Army bunker near the mouth of a 600 year old volcano actually)
TIPS on Repurposing Social Content from Queenstown, New Zeland on the shore of Lake Wakatipu and the Remarkables Mountain range.
Obviously I have a ways to go before making these kinds of videos really good. Simply creating an outline script and adding a microphone and tripod would probably make a big difference vs. using a Lumix and making it up as I go.
Despite the non-existent production value, I am curious if readers of Online MARKETING BLOG are interested in this kind of thing. I don’t plan on posting them all here, but will likely draw attention to one per trip and post the rest to our YouTube channel. Is this format of any interest to you? What do you think of video previews for a longer blog post?
Thanks for watching and reading.
TIPS on Social Media ROI from Sydney Australia near the famous Opera House & Sydney Harbour Bridge. Sorry about the wind, it messed with the audio a bit. I need to get a Zi8 and a microphone!
Common B2B Facebook Myths from Rangitoto Island, off Auckland, New Zealand. (From an old Army bunker near the mouth of a 600 year old volcano actually)
TIPS on Repurposing Social Content from Queenstown, New Zeland on the shore of Lake Wakatipu and the Remarkables Mountain range.
Obviously I have a ways to go before making these kinds of videos really good. Simply creating an outline script and adding a microphone and tripod would probably make a big difference vs. using a Lumix and making it up as I go.
Despite the non-existent production value, I am curious if readers of Online MARKETING BLOG are interested in this kind of thing. I don’t plan on posting them all here, but will likely draw attention to one per trip and post the rest to our YouTube channel. Is this format of any interest to you? What do you think of video previews for a longer blog post?
Thanks for watching and reading.
GREAT MARKETING TIPS FOR BLOGGERS
“Why should we have a blog?” It’s a reasonable question.
Nevermind the fact that millions of businesses are blogging and multiples of those millions of customers are reading said blogs. In fact, 23% of the primary Fortune 500 corporations have an external corporate blog.
Blogs as a content management system make it very easy for content publishers within a company to surface informative, useful content directly to their “customers” and indirectly via search engines and social channels. Business bloggers report their activities have resulted in greater industry visibility, new customers & sales and thought leadership.
My take is that if a business has something interesting to say and stories to tell, then a blogging platform can be one of the most productive channels/methods for publishing and engaging. If not, then there are other, more important problems to solve.
For companies that are new to the idea of blogging as a brand, vs. individuals going out on their own and blogging about their professional passions, the notion of starting and maintaining corporate blog often invokes fears of being sucked into a black hole of “counterproductivity”. Writing, researching, IT support and hosting, plus marketing and measuring something that wasn’t forecast in the first place and without certain returns, can seem a lost cause.
For those optimists that are cognizant of the benefits of a blog communication channel but don’t have the forecast resources for it, here are a few tips on blogging that will get you started in the right direction in a manageable way.
1. Become a blog reader. I can’t stress this enough. If you don’t understand blogs from an information consumption point of view, it’s debateable whether you’ll be able to produce a successful one of your own. If you read certain magazines, newspapers or email newsletters from certain sources, try subscribing to their blogs instead – or as an alternative. That way you’re not spending additional time (outside of a few seconds subscribing) and you might even save some time.
2. Set goals for your business blog. If you don’t have a destination for your blogging effort then “time suck” will become your unwanted friend. Don’t waste time trying to serve everyone. Be purposeful in your blogging effort by identifying a few, reasonable business outcomes and timeframe. KPIs (key performance indicators) are a good starting point for measurement that can lead to outcomes.
For example, a common business outcome for blogging might be “increase relevant traffic to the corporate website”. A blog that publishes useful, customer centric content a few times per week gives reason to come back and to visit more detailed information on the corporate website.
Set a goal for a percentage increase in blog and keyword referred traffic to the corporate website. Create a blog editorial plan that pays attention to linking to corporate pages from topical blog posts and use keywords in the posts and links that are relevant to the destination pages. Over time, search engines will see those links and send more visitors to the corporate website by ranking the pages higher in search results. The links can also attract visitors directly.
The common mistake companies make is to set a goal like, “attract more blog referred traffic to the corporate website” and then start blogging personal or corporate centric information: announcements, product and press releases, PR speak and other chest beating.
Ignoring what would be of interest to customers is a FAIL when it comes to marketing, let alone blogging. How to find out what customers want on your business blog? Ask them. Ping customers in the corporate newsletter, ask them in person at events, talk to your sales and customer service departments for customer topics and trends. Look at successful competitor blogs and topically relevant industry blogs as well. Then create an editorial plan that gives your corporate blogging effort a chance to be successful by planning blog topics that serve customer needs and indirectly, business needs. As a result, the blogging effort will be more focused, intentional and likely to result in the desired business outcomes.
3. Create a schedule. A blog editorial plan serves multiple purposes, including putting into action the above suggestion. It also helps direct content creation for business blogs with multiple contributors. It keeps writers on track with content that will most likely meet customer and business needs. A planned blogging editorial schedule also helps when writers run into dry periods. Yet another benefit is that it creates a set of expected editorial for readers. It creates an element of predictability readers can count on to return to week after week.
For example, Mondays might focus on a message from the CEO or other business leader. By the way, if they won’t write it for you, call them and record a discussion on the topic. Then transcribe that recording into a blog post. Wednesdays might be a tips post about your product or service and Fridays might be a news roundup for the week. Tuesdays and Thursdays can be wildcards or days where you don’t post at all.
As time goes on, you can experiment with different schedules to see what works best. Creating a schedule and executing on it does add time, but it does so in a way that makes your business blogging effort a lot more efficient and productive. Showing measurable outcomes from early wins can help you gain additional support and resources for the blogging effort.
Along those lines, why not do a little blogger outreach with some connected friends in the media? Getting mentions of your new business blog on other high profile websites or blogs can inspire internal support.
4. Be efficient with content. There are many ways to get more out of less with content creation and knowing what does well already in combination with an understanding of what your target audience is interested in is essential.
One implementation of this kind of efficiency is the Oreo cookie news post. Set up Google or Twitter style alerts on topics you’re covering to identify potential sources. Setup the issue/topic (top of cookie), excerpt the topically relevant article/blog post (white stuff) and conclude with your own observations and a call to action for reader opinions (bottom of cooke). That’s a classic blog post and if the writer can be engaging with the setup and conclusion, it works very well for a corporate blog.
Another type of post that’s efficient is the blog review. Find ranked lists of blogs in your industry and pick a handful of blogs to review every month or whatever interval works for you. Create some basic criteria and score each blog. Include screenshots of each blog and describe what you like about them. Link to those blogs and offer a badge for them to use as “flair” if they want. Compile all those blogs into a list.
Interviews and guest posts (from internal sources, marketing partners, customers) can be especially effective and efficient. Writing interview questions takes time, but the responses are written for you and that can be the bulk of the post. Guest posts of course are entirely written by someone else, you simply need to source the writer and edit.
5. Make blogging a team effort. Our 7 year blog birthday for TopRank’s Online Marketing blog is coming up in a few days. After 7 years of blogging, I can tell you that very few individuals have what it takes to create unique, useful and compelling content for more than 6 months, let alone 7 years. That’s why a corporate blog really needs to be a team effort in the long run. It might fall on the shoulders of one person to start, but a smaller amount of effort from multiple people is more interesting, expands audience reach and it’s far more sustainable.
If you’ve started a business blog and weren’t successful with it or you’re thinking of how to implement a business blog efficiently with your online marketing mix, I can’t recommend enough the expertise of the team at TopRank Marketing. Few agencies have been involved with setting up business blogs as long as they have (I mean “we” but the magic happens with the TopRank team). Also, be sure to check out the blogging category here for numerous “how to” posts on many aspects of blogging for business.
Nevermind the fact that millions of businesses are blogging and multiples of those millions of customers are reading said blogs. In fact, 23% of the primary Fortune 500 corporations have an external corporate blog.
Blogs as a content management system make it very easy for content publishers within a company to surface informative, useful content directly to their “customers” and indirectly via search engines and social channels. Business bloggers report their activities have resulted in greater industry visibility, new customers & sales and thought leadership.
My take is that if a business has something interesting to say and stories to tell, then a blogging platform can be one of the most productive channels/methods for publishing and engaging. If not, then there are other, more important problems to solve.
For companies that are new to the idea of blogging as a brand, vs. individuals going out on their own and blogging about their professional passions, the notion of starting and maintaining corporate blog often invokes fears of being sucked into a black hole of “counterproductivity”. Writing, researching, IT support and hosting, plus marketing and measuring something that wasn’t forecast in the first place and without certain returns, can seem a lost cause.
For those optimists that are cognizant of the benefits of a blog communication channel but don’t have the forecast resources for it, here are a few tips on blogging that will get you started in the right direction in a manageable way.
1. Become a blog reader. I can’t stress this enough. If you don’t understand blogs from an information consumption point of view, it’s debateable whether you’ll be able to produce a successful one of your own. If you read certain magazines, newspapers or email newsletters from certain sources, try subscribing to their blogs instead – or as an alternative. That way you’re not spending additional time (outside of a few seconds subscribing) and you might even save some time.
2. Set goals for your business blog. If you don’t have a destination for your blogging effort then “time suck” will become your unwanted friend. Don’t waste time trying to serve everyone. Be purposeful in your blogging effort by identifying a few, reasonable business outcomes and timeframe. KPIs (key performance indicators) are a good starting point for measurement that can lead to outcomes.
For example, a common business outcome for blogging might be “increase relevant traffic to the corporate website”. A blog that publishes useful, customer centric content a few times per week gives reason to come back and to visit more detailed information on the corporate website.
Set a goal for a percentage increase in blog and keyword referred traffic to the corporate website. Create a blog editorial plan that pays attention to linking to corporate pages from topical blog posts and use keywords in the posts and links that are relevant to the destination pages. Over time, search engines will see those links and send more visitors to the corporate website by ranking the pages higher in search results. The links can also attract visitors directly.
The common mistake companies make is to set a goal like, “attract more blog referred traffic to the corporate website” and then start blogging personal or corporate centric information: announcements, product and press releases, PR speak and other chest beating.
Ignoring what would be of interest to customers is a FAIL when it comes to marketing, let alone blogging. How to find out what customers want on your business blog? Ask them. Ping customers in the corporate newsletter, ask them in person at events, talk to your sales and customer service departments for customer topics and trends. Look at successful competitor blogs and topically relevant industry blogs as well. Then create an editorial plan that gives your corporate blogging effort a chance to be successful by planning blog topics that serve customer needs and indirectly, business needs. As a result, the blogging effort will be more focused, intentional and likely to result in the desired business outcomes.
3. Create a schedule. A blog editorial plan serves multiple purposes, including putting into action the above suggestion. It also helps direct content creation for business blogs with multiple contributors. It keeps writers on track with content that will most likely meet customer and business needs. A planned blogging editorial schedule also helps when writers run into dry periods. Yet another benefit is that it creates a set of expected editorial for readers. It creates an element of predictability readers can count on to return to week after week.
For example, Mondays might focus on a message from the CEO or other business leader. By the way, if they won’t write it for you, call them and record a discussion on the topic. Then transcribe that recording into a blog post. Wednesdays might be a tips post about your product or service and Fridays might be a news roundup for the week. Tuesdays and Thursdays can be wildcards or days where you don’t post at all.
As time goes on, you can experiment with different schedules to see what works best. Creating a schedule and executing on it does add time, but it does so in a way that makes your business blogging effort a lot more efficient and productive. Showing measurable outcomes from early wins can help you gain additional support and resources for the blogging effort.
Along those lines, why not do a little blogger outreach with some connected friends in the media? Getting mentions of your new business blog on other high profile websites or blogs can inspire internal support.
4. Be efficient with content. There are many ways to get more out of less with content creation and knowing what does well already in combination with an understanding of what your target audience is interested in is essential.
One implementation of this kind of efficiency is the Oreo cookie news post. Set up Google or Twitter style alerts on topics you’re covering to identify potential sources. Setup the issue/topic (top of cookie), excerpt the topically relevant article/blog post (white stuff) and conclude with your own observations and a call to action for reader opinions (bottom of cooke). That’s a classic blog post and if the writer can be engaging with the setup and conclusion, it works very well for a corporate blog.
Another type of post that’s efficient is the blog review. Find ranked lists of blogs in your industry and pick a handful of blogs to review every month or whatever interval works for you. Create some basic criteria and score each blog. Include screenshots of each blog and describe what you like about them. Link to those blogs and offer a badge for them to use as “flair” if they want. Compile all those blogs into a list.
Interviews and guest posts (from internal sources, marketing partners, customers) can be especially effective and efficient. Writing interview questions takes time, but the responses are written for you and that can be the bulk of the post. Guest posts of course are entirely written by someone else, you simply need to source the writer and edit.
5. Make blogging a team effort. Our 7 year blog birthday for TopRank’s Online Marketing blog is coming up in a few days. After 7 years of blogging, I can tell you that very few individuals have what it takes to create unique, useful and compelling content for more than 6 months, let alone 7 years. That’s why a corporate blog really needs to be a team effort in the long run. It might fall on the shoulders of one person to start, but a smaller amount of effort from multiple people is more interesting, expands audience reach and it’s far more sustainable.
If you’ve started a business blog and weren’t successful with it or you’re thinking of how to implement a business blog efficiently with your online marketing mix, I can’t recommend enough the expertise of the team at TopRank Marketing. Few agencies have been involved with setting up business blogs as long as they have (I mean “we” but the magic happens with the TopRank team). Also, be sure to check out the blogging category here for numerous “how to” posts on many aspects of blogging for business.
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