Month: June 2010

Blogging for your business – A few blogging tips

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Does blogging for your business feel like taking the leap into the unknown? Here are few blogging tips and strategies for you to try  The purpose of this post is to offer you, the business/brand related blogger beginning and intermediate strategy for the blogging component of your digital presence. 

As a company, brand, or individual “Why blog?” 

A quick search for “Breckenridge” queries 1770 results in the past 7 days.  Your visitors and guests are already reading about your industry, location, or product category.  Where are you?  A blog tends to have the voice of a peer or expert rather than sales copy and advertising, or at least it should.  If you are a ski or ride instructor we provide it here: http://www.mysnowpro.com/signup/    If you are not, you can get a free blog to practice your craft at WordPress

Here are a few more reasons:

  • It’s Free
  • Generate Positive Content
  • Build brand recognition and loyalty
  • Build Credibility with customers
  • Use for crisis managment
  • Customer Service
  • Provide timely and relevant content
  • Easily target industry trends and search terms

When our company designs a corporate website strategy, there are a few musts and a blog is a must.

Who in the company should blog?

It doesn’t have to be the CEO or CMO, although it could be.  It could even be shared between a few different people within the organization.  Ideally the blogger should be familiar with different aspects of the organization, as well as having comfort navigating the internet and finding information.

They should also read blogs themselves and may have some basic knowledge of SEO and keywording.  Here is a primer.  

The blogger should NOT be micromanaged, yet operate within the policies established by the company.  This said, the CMO or company owner should be able to read the blog and offer feedback.

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Blogging Suggestions:

Be a “true voice” and offer relevant information rather than simply a PR pumping machine.  Link to other articles where appropriate.

Host the blog on your server.  Don’t rely on blogger or another 3rd party hosting site!  If your blog and all of your content disappears, then you have no recourse.  And if this happens, your passion for blogging will diminish. 

It is best to maintain an honest, and informative blog which is useful to the visitor and the industry while benefiting the company.

  • Have guidelines for the blogger to follow. If something is potentially “edgy” or the timing is around earnings speak with the CMO or communications director for their input.
  • Content is Relevant and interesting.  Some companies, Industries or locations are interesting enough to write an article a day, although many do not.  So, where can we find content?  I follow a number of industry specific Facebook feeds, Google Reader, Google Insights or Trends.  For the ski industry, Oct-December regularly sees major spikes in global search interest . This is the information people are looking to find, create it for them.
  • Use images on your posts. Bring additional interest to the text.
  • Keep up with local event calendars.  For Breckenridge events, I follow GoBreck.com
  • Use the holiday or start of a season as a catalyst to create content.  

Frequency

Advice here varies, once a day, once a week, twice a week.   My recommendation – Make it regular!  If you start off once a day, and then move to once a month your readers will wonder what has happened, and stop following.  I would rather see a blog start off at once a week, and then build it’s frequency and quality rather than reduce frequency.  

Don’t just use it as a marketing tool

Mention your company, but keep it brief unless it is about company specific news.   Having company specials is fine as long as you keep them to once a week or so, as it offer an incentive to read the blog but won’t be overbearing.

Allow readers to comment and communicate with you.  Many business owners shy away from Social Media as they are concerned with negative comments and having a “bad press” on their website.  Here is a newsflash…  People in the world are already saying these things, however now you are able to address these concerns promptly and the communication you offer will add credibility for your company.

 

Create links and Publicize 

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  • Link to relevant posts and websites which are relevant to your posts.
  • Host the blog on your server.  Don’t rely on blogger or another 3rd party hosting site!  
  • Your blog link should appear on every page of your website if possible, have an RSS feed prominently located so that people can easily follow your writing.  

Enjoy your writing.  Blog what is relevant.  Blog what you enjoy, and do so regularly.

As a professional ski
instructor and digital media proponent, Jonathan Lawson began posting
daily photos and a few words a day on his
www.MySnowPro.com/jonthanlawson blog (2006).  Within a few weeks of
daily posts, he began picking up significant readership, he was
oblivious to Google Trends or Google Insights.  Jonathan didn’t know how
to optimize his blog posts.  However, through trial and error, and more
than 1000 individual posts and 100s of hours study he has become a
student of blogging best practices. In the past 4 years, he has
consulted with business regarding the structure, frequency, &  blog
and social media integration with their current digital presence. 

Blogging – Anticipating demand and using Google for keyword ideas

I started blogging in 2006, prior to that time I would put my thoughts in my journals.  It is often said, “The weakest ink remembers more than the strongest mind”.  I didn’t know that I could make money blogging, nor did I know that I could use google keywords to get more readership.

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I just wrote about ideas, about the lessons I had with my students, and about other passions of mine such as trading.  Prior to blogging my journals contained my ideas and muses. I still go back to them for inspiration for new ideas, and memories of previously comprehended ones. I have also found that certain situations spawn similar seeds of thoughts.  

For the past 3 years of “managing” a blogging website I have noticed trends, but until recently I have not been able to quantify them.  I would write timely information based on “my time” and experiences.  Indeed this is one of the powers of the blogging platform, however as a business I have found a few more structured ways to blog.  What if you ran a Recreation and Sports website and wanted to get the most readership on a given topic?  When would you start blogging about skiing, tennis, golf, yoga, weight lifting, physical therapy, etc?  And what terms are people ACTUALLY searching.
Before I go further, I am sure there are some blogging purists seeing this going in the way of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or SEM (Search Engine Marketing), or populist marketing.  Indeed you are seeing that!  
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I may write about a number of things, and for my “skiing business” I would like as many people who are interested in my subjects of expertise read these articles.  That is one of the main reasons I write and publish them.
So, how might you structure blogging with the Recreation and Sports…
Using Google Insights you could input a few of what you consider to be relevant topics.  Let’s say, Golf, Tennis, Skiing, Yoga, Sports.  Each of these terms have seasonality (which is why I initially picked them).  You may anticipate Skiing would see winter demand, and you would be right.  It peaks in December, and has since 2004. My question is, “When does it start seeing a ramp in activity? Reasonably simple to assume, but Insights let’s us see a bottom in June, ramping in Sept and spiking in Nov/Dec.  And what specific search term is chosen?  As I write this in June, the strong terms are “ski” and “cross country skiing”.
A person could assume we would see summer spikes in Golf and Tennis, and we would be right again. The term sports remains relatively high year-around, not seeing significant seasonality.  Golf troughs in November and begins to rise in February and peaks in July often around major events.  Although, over the past 6yrs we have been seeing lower lows and lower highs.  And the current top searches for Golf are “Golf” and “Golf Course” (but not “golf courses”).  With the top countries of origin being:
  1. Ireland
  2. US
  3. Canada
  4. UK

A final observation I will make in this post is regarding aggregate demand is that we can see trends over time, and relative interest.  Here is a list of 5 from high to low and their relative score out of 100 (taken on June 1st, 2010):

  1. Golf – 58
  2. Sports – 53Glory1.jpg
  3. Tennis – 21
  4. Yoga – 11
  5. Skiing – 3
In short, If I were going to write an article on skiing I would most likely write something regarding summer sports which can benefit my skiing, or summer activities which can be enjoyed at ski resort, etc.
To reminisce in an entire blog post about the great powder day we enjoyed in March may fall upon deaf ears, blind eyes and wither like a snowflake in June.
Stay relevant, and know what the audience is looking to read.  This relevance in blog posts can significantly impact your overall Organic ranking for your web presence in search.