Five ways to use a blog as part of your content strategy

by Sally Bagshaw on August 7, 2010

ProBlogger event, Melbourne

ProBlogger event, Melbourne

On Tuesday I flew to Melbourne to attend the first ProBlogger event. The room was filled with 150 aspiring bloggers – some more successful than others, but all with a keen interest in how to write and maintain an engaging blog.

We listened to a stellar line up of speakers including Darren Rowse, Chris Garrett, Yaro Starak, Collis Ta’eed and Pip Lincolne. Everyone there on the day went home with a head filled with ideas and ways to improve their blog.

It was great to see so many people get excited about blogging. Unfortunately a lot of businesses out there decide to have a blog on their site without any real thought about how it will support their business goals, let alone how it will fit in with an overall content strategy.

So if that’s you, here are five ways you can use a blog as part of your content strategy:

1. Respond to issues

One of the best things about blogs is the speed at which a new post can be published. So as part of your content strategy, incorporate how issues can be dealt with and responded to. Decide who can say what, and who is the right person to answer any comments that get left on the post.

If you have a lot of subscribers to your blog you will be able to quickly reach a large amount of customers with the facts. But don’t assume it’s the only channel you’ll need to communicate through. Have it as part of the mix.

2. Improve your SEO

By writing targeted blog posts you can help optimise your site for specific keywords and phrases as part of your SEO strategy – in the same way as article writing.  Say you worked for a company that makes blinds (for windows) and want to optimise for ‘blockout blinds’. You could write a whole series of posts on the types that are available, what you can use them for (children’s rooms, offices, rooms that get hot in summer). Make the posts useful, encourage discussion and boost your rankings.

3. Reinforce your key messages

This is obvious, but make sure your posts back up the key messages of your business. Have a clear understanding of who is likely to read your blog (which of your target audiences), and what you want them to know after visiting your blog. Think of posts that delve into the details of what you do, why you do it, and why you are better than your competitors. The trick is to keep the focus on the reader – so always focus on the ‘what’s in it for you’.

Remove ‘we’ from the conversation, so instead of:

We use the finest ingredients in our cupcakes.

Say

You’ll be able to taste the difference, as each cupcake contains only the finest ingredients.

4. Support product launches

Use your blog to review new products, publish tutorials on how to use new products, and run competitions to win new products.

5. Introduce key personnel

Most businesses have great employees who are always ‘behind the scenes’. Use the blog to introduce them so your customers get to know you better. If you run an e-commerce site, think about showing a day in the life of your order fillers.

I like the way that Coles Online (an Australian supermarket) has profiled some staff.

So now it’s over to you – how do you use  your blog as part of your content strategy?

If you need help figuring out where your blog sits within your content strategy, contact me for a content strategy consultation.

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Review: Content strategy for the web

by Sally Bagshaw on July 6, 2010

Content strategy for the Web

Content strategy for the web

OK, Kristina IS the content strategy queen. She’s out there constantly promoting the discipline. Follow her on Twitter: @halvorson

Author

Kristina Halvorson, 2010

Summary

Kristina’s book is considered the ‘must have’ book on content strategy. And so it should. It’s one of the first books to really break down the process of how content strategy fits into  not only web projects, but the broader organisation.

“This book is an introduction to the emerging practice of content strategy. It provides a high-level overview of the benefits, roles, activities, and deliverables associated with content strategy.” pg ix.

It’s not a massive textbook. At under 200 pages (including indexes and references), it’s more a starter than a main course. It sets the scene, provides a framework, and leaves plenty of room for others to come and fill the gaps. More a discussion paper than an encyclopedia.

Table of contents:

Learn

  • Solution
  • Problem
  • Discipline

Plan

  • Audit
  • Analysis
  • Strategy

Create

  • Workflow
  • Writing
  • Delivery

Govern

  • Measurement
  • Maintenance
  • Paradigm

Good bits

When I first read this book at the beginning of the year, I felt like I had finally found a name for what I’d been doing in the various web projects I’d been working on. It’s a whole lot of commonsense – but before this book came along there wasn’t one place to find all of the information together. You had to glean a little from copywriting/writing for the web books, a little from usability books, something from information architecture books, and round it off with some project management knowledge.

It’s an easy read, so you can pick it up and start implementing quickly. There are also good reading lists included if you want to expand your knowledge further.

Bits that could be improved

As I mentioned before, this is a compact book. Don’t expect it to answer all your questions. Luckily there are some excellent forums and discussions popping up all around the internet to take some of Kristina’s theories to the next level. The gap filling has commenced.

Best fit

Web managers, newbie content strategists, content producers, project managers, web copywriters. Anyone working on a large web redevelopment project.

Buy it

You can buy this book from Amazon.com: Content Strategy for the Web or from The Book Depository UK: Content Strategy for the Web (affiliate links).

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Presentation: Keeping content king

10 June 2010

I presented at Interactive Minds yesterday. It was a great morning with some great speakers including Simon Lockyer from Everyday Hero, Clive France from Internetics, and the very interesting Vivek Wagle from Lonely Planet. The overall topic was ‘Content is still king’ and my angle was how to keep content king. I looked at how [...]

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Consider a message matrix as part of your content assessment

31 May 2010

Key message dilution is a big risk when you have too much content spread across too many platforms. It’s not rocket science –  the more content you have out there, there more you need to ensure that it’s all hitting the right mark. A simple way to gain a ‘snapshot’ of how well your content [...]

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Content strategy is bigger than the web team

24 May 2010

I’ve worked in some big organisations – organisations where the web team, the marketing team, and the business areas all worked in little silos. Conversing when needed, but never really crossing over or properly collaborating to create strategic plans that related to content. Most planning efforts were driven by the web operations team. The same [...]

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Content obesity – an organisation’s silent killer

17 May 2010

Web publishing used to be a secret art form that only a select few knew how to do. Developers had control of when and where content was published. The average employee didn’t understand code or FTPing – and didn’t particularly want to. Website content was taken from existing brochures, and Google was still an idea [...]

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