Does Your Company Blog for Fun, Fame, or Fortune?
The reasons for having a company blog can be numerous: drive traffic, create brand awareness, or generate leads to name a few. A big thing is I see so many companies do is that they are blogging about topics that build brand awareness or traffic but target an audience that is not interested in buying their product…..and then they wonder why they are not generating more leads. While I am an advocate for all three types of blogging (see below), make sure that you have the correct type of content to drive your desired result.
To get a better understanding of what I am talking about, let’s look at the different types of blogs and the type of content you can produce with the goal of generating specific results.
Blogging to Increase Traffic
This is probably the group that most well known blogs fall under. They focus on being very educational and include the following types of content:
- How-to Articles
This is the bread and butter of many blogs. They focus on explaining how to overcome certain challenges or do something different from then norm. This type of content is popular because it meets the needs of your readers. When people discover something new, they’ll find great value in your content.
- Expert Interviews
When you interview people who have professional knowledge in topical areas of interest to your ideal base, you'll be able to easily generate outstanding content and build relationships with experts.
- Reviews
When you review other people's books, products, or services, you accomplish two things. First, you provide highly valuable content to your reader base in the form of an objective opinion. When you direct a critical eye to something your audience might want to purchase, revealing the pros and cons, you become a trusted resource, one they know they can count on to help them make decisions. The second advantage is often overlooked: when you review a book or a company's products, you'll likely get the attention of the author or company. This is especially true in the case of book reviews. When you place an honest assessment of authors' work up for public consumption, you gain a major opportunity to give a gift to high-profile individuals. This could become a foot in the door to working with an expert down the road.
Blogging to Increase Brand Awareness
We have all seen it many times: blogs written that pretty much only talk about company/author and how wonderful they are. While you want to build awareness, here are some types of content that can do so without making you look like a pompous ass:
- Case Studies
A case study is an examination of a business or individual who gleaned success from using your product or service. This type of story often details the challenges people faced, what they did to overcome those challenges, and the actual results they achieved. Instead of talking about your company, focus on your client, the challenge they had, and how they overcame it with your assistance. When your readers read how others are winning, they’ll discover new ideas or tips that could help them achieve success from you.
- New Stories
It’s seems like every time something changes in a company, they feel the need to publish a press release or blog about it. Instead of just publishing new stories about your company focus on stories from your prospects industry as a whole. For example, if you sell retail scheduling software, you would cover news stories in all of retail not just scheduling.
- Contrarian Stories
When everyone is zigging, do you like to zag? Do you like to question conventional wisdom? If you do, then contrarian stories are for you. Contrarian stories seek to examine the ugly underbelly of commonly held beliefs and practices. Be careful though, don’t make it your mission to reveal what’s wrong with everything and everyone in your industry. Doing that might gain you some exposure initially; but in the end, it will only build a base of readers who share your skepticism.
Blogging to Generate Leads
If you are running a corporate blog, chances are you are doing so to generate leads. For many, this can be a challenging task. One of the best pieces of advice I can give is to focus on the problems your prospects have and use the following types of content to convert those readers into prospects.
- Reports Based on Surveys
Releasing original research in the form of a report is one of the most powerful ways to draw attention to your business and generate new leads. When you create reports based on surveys, polls, etc., you provide insight that is highly valuable to your audience. When survey data is packaged into a valuable report and released for free (well honestly, in exchange for their email address), the results can be explosive. This provides a great opportunity to nurture them and convert them from a marketing qualified lead into a sales qualified lead.
- White Papers
White papers have the amazing capability to keep delivering value to your ideal readers. Keep in mind though, I'm not talking about those boring technical pieces you may be familiar with. Rather, I'm talking about highly engaging business documents that help people solve problems. When you blog about your prospects’ problems and then make the call to action at the end of the article to download a white paper that teaches them how to solve their problem, you will see drastic changes in your conversion rates.
- Micro Events
Micro events are free, live activities that take place online and last for about an hour. Webinars, social media events, Internet radio shows, teleclasses, and live video broadcasts are all examples. These free events typically bring an expert live to your audience, and are more powerful than expert interviews because they're in real time. Live events have a special ability to attract lots of people—and experts. Since these events can attract such large numbers of targeted prospects, there really is no comparison when it comes to their ability to generate leads.
The Bottom Line
Whether you blog to drive traffic, increase brand awareness or generate more leads, it’s important to understand your targeted audience’s goals and the types of content they like to consume. The key point to keep in mind is to not focus too much in any one area. It’s better to achieve a balance of all three types of blogs. When you do so, you can have fun, fame, and fortune.
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