When you’re trying to create great content for your company blog, it’s only too easy to focus on your corporate message first. But the ideas that serve your company aren’t always going to make great, shareable content that gets your fans talking. At yesterday’s Gaspedal’s Word of Mouth Supergenius conference in Chicago, Jason Falls argued that companies need to create a new marketing plan for their blog, separate from the company’s sale marketing strategy.
Thing about your user for a second. What do they care about? Chances are it’s not your company. But they probably care about something related to your company. You can use that interest to create engaging content that your readers will care about, will come back for and will tell their friends about — falling deeper in love with your brand at every step. Falls suggested companies need to find ways to:
- Be useful.
- Be controversial.
- Be insightful.
- Be entertaining.
How are you finding ways to meet your users content needs?
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Funny! I had the exact same four things written down as our company’s blog mantra in terms of content strategy. But who authors company blog posts matter just as much, if not more.
http://tweetiesblog.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/should-ceos-blog/
Rather than have separate strategies for blogging and for marketing, companies should clean up their marketing strategies to conform to the four guidelines.
It’s good advice. I think I might just have made all four with my latest blog post. At first I thought it wasn’t controversial but then answering the question “Can you Drive if You are Blind?” with a yes probably counts as controversial.
It probably isn’t possibe (or even desirable) to achieve all four of these in every blog post.
Good article and great idea. Gets to the point that what readers of all stripes require _value_ to keep coming back. This truism is just as valid for readership as product and service usefulness.
The four things to keep in mind can all be summed up by the first — be useful! Entertainment is a value too, especially in trying times.
What happens when you (or your company) forget that providing value is _the_ goal? Read more: http://budurl.com/qb28
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[...] Why company blogs need a mind of their own Your company’s ideal blog-marketing strategy isn’t necessarily the same as its sales-marketing strategy, argued Jason Falls at Gaspedal’s Word of Mouth Supergenius conference. To get fans talking, you need to step outside of your sales strategy and find ways to create content that’s useful, controversial or engaging in its own right, he argues. SmartBrief/SmartBlog on Social Media [...]