Yes, your blog.
I have prepared and delivered some recent presentations on blogs and more importantly, on how valuable they can be as a marketing tool. Anyone can have a blog and a variety of free tools like WordPress are available to help aspiring bloggers write their way to success.
Yesterday I met a friend for coffee to talk about marketing, websites, social media and yes: blogs. Part of our discussion surrounded how brands – and individuals – can leverage and promote their blogs. Let’s first define what a blog should and should not be:
Shoulds:
- Blogs should be 200-400 words in length
- Convey sound advice and useful information to readers on specific topics
- Be perceived as a go-to resource, written by knowledgeable individuals
- Well-written and edited (i.e. proofread!) prior to posting. You do not need to be a professional writer to author a blog
- Give readers an opportunity to subscribe
- Be rich with keywords that search engines like Google absolutely love
- Show that you’re an authority on a topic – or a series of topics
Should Nots:
- Resemble War and Peace. Keep it relatively short, sweet and on-topic.
- Be an opportunity to sell your products or services. Period.
- Be too uptight or give away the farm. This is neither an instruction manual nor a free how-to guide.
- Include photos and posts that are unrelated to your business (if it’s a professional blog). Images that are related to the blog topic are great.
- Be comprised entirely of photos. That’s Instagram: not a blog.
- Be written in an unprofessional tone. Blogs should “wear” your voice, but they should still maintain a sense of professional decorum.
- Exist in a vacuum: link your blog to your website and add an RSS feed button so that people can subscribe to and follow your blog.
Stay tuned for a future blog – on how to promote your blog!