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Learn how to make them fresh, simple and effective. 
BtoB marketing professionals answer the question, "Does your company have a social media strategy?"
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March 2008, Issue 49 |
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How to Build a Blog that Draws a Crowd
By Sheila Scarborough, freelance writer and blogger
An engaging blog is written by an engaging person.
A boring blog is "buy my stuff" pabulum written by committee, or all of the posts are blandly neutral because they are carefully vetted by higher authority. Remove the energy of human personality and a blog becomes limp and lifeless. No one will want to read it.
The two-way relationship with readers means that blogs are very different from Web sites, and that is why they can be so powerful. A site is static and one-way; the company is in broadcast mode with predictable standard product or service information. For customers to move behind the faceless storefront and really identify with an organization requires a different kind of online presence.
On a blog, the back-and-forth discussion in a lively comment thread represents the interaction between the author and readers. You can tell a lot about an author from how he or she "talks" to readers and responds to their thoughts and concerns. A positive, responsive company blogger is the face of a positive, responsive company.
Readers and customers want to deal with a person. An engaging blog makes visitors feel that they are dealing with a human being on the other side of the keyboard.
You've picked the right blogger, but don’t blog. Yet.
I see the same question repeatedly in the LinkedIn Answers section on Blogging: "I have (or my company has) a blog. How do I get traffic?"To build a blog that will represent your company, attract readers and best serve your customers, it helps to be familiar with blogs in general, including those of your competitors. The first step in blogging is not to simply start blogging; it is to do some homework, determine your focus, learn about your community and decide how your blog will stand out in the digital flood.
Read blogs. Read across a variety of content areas, not just those pertaining to your business, to develop a sense of how various authors engage within comments and respond to different topics of the day. Note how easy it is (or isn') to leave a comment, run a search for a particular subject, drill down through the archives to find relevant posts and sign up for an RSS feed or e-mail delivery.
Which blogs resonate with the character of their author or company, bringing you back every day, eager to read more? Which ones give you a mental "blue screen of death?" Remember those lessons when it's time to decide how you want to talk with your readers.
During the research phase, monitor bulletin boards and forums that relate to your prospective blogging topic, and note which threads seem to interest participants. Do any of the more active and articulate forum members have a blog URL in their signature? Click through it, read their work and perhaps introduce yourself in an e-mail or in a comment on one of their posts. You’re introducing yourself to a possible reader of your blog, and you’re learning about the online community that you’re about to join as a blogger.
The online world is smaller than you might think: Many of the same readers participate across a variety of blog comment threads and forums. Invite these “movers and shakers” to visit your blog once you launch it.
What will you write about three times a week, for months on end?
A blog is a time and energy commitment, just like any relationship.Successful blogs have great things to say and they say them often, with at least two or three posts per week. Search engine spiders like fresh content, but so do human readers.
The 300-500 word length of an average post seems deceptively easy—how hard can it be to crank them out? Plenty hard, if you're doing it right. It is not easy to articulate creative, stimulating thoughts for six months to a year, which is how long it usually takes to get truly established as a voice in the blogosphere.
You need an editorial calendar—a plan for what you want to say—before you hit the publish button on that first blog post.
Develop a structure not only for topic ideas, but also for trying out different types of media. Maybe you’ll have a written Q&A interview with an interesting employee on Mondays, a video about one of your cool new products every Wednesday and a CEO podcast on Thursdays. This sustains interest, continues to bring a human face to your company and also involves a variety of employees in engaging readers, rather than making your blog "something that Susie does over in Cube X" (on top of her regular job, no doubt).
Decide what you're going to write about; don't simply jump in. It's easier to sustain a blog's momentum and build traffic with a well-crafted plan.
Links: how people find your blog
Links are the connection coin of the realm. Blog rankings are based on who is linking in to you, so naturally bloggers focus on inbound links, but the secret is to look outward. The best way to wave to someone in the blogosphere—let them know you're there and get them (and perhaps their readers) to your site—is to link out to their blog or Web site.Every blogger (some more obsessively than others) uses analytical tools to see who is linking in to them, and they often click back through to investigate the blogs that linked. Congratulations; that's called pulling readers into your blog, and you did it by reaching out.
The world is full of busy people who must have a good reason to include your blog in their lives. Focused, relevant and frequent content, written with a distinctive human voice and fleshed out with pertinent outbound links that add value to the discussion, will do more than any SEO voodoo to ensure that your blog is successful.
Sheila Scarborough is a writer specializing in travel, NHRA drag racing and social media/Web 2.0. She likes to use both sides of her brain. Visit her blogs to learn more:
Family Travel blog: http://blogs.bootsnall.com/Seafarer
Motorsports on Fast Machines: http://www.fastmachines.com
Social media/Web 2.0 on Every Dot Connects: http://everydotconnects.com/
Know colleagues who would be interested in this topic? Send them this newsletter, and if they subscribe, you could win Garr Reynolds' new book, Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery.
Marketing Watchdog Journal is a monthly newsletter from Bulldog Solutions, a lead optimization and lead management company dedicated to helping our clients generate more, better leads and turn them into revenue. We welcome your feedback on this newsletter's content and design, and encourage you to share your ideas for topics you would like us to cover in future issues. Please send your comments or questions about Bulldog Solutions to Amy Bills, senior manager of Field Marketing.
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