how to create and promote your blog

www.marketingsavant.com Twitter: @danavan The MarketingSavant Group

The MarketingSavant Group

How to Create and Promote Your Blog Dana VanDen Heuvel



Why Do You Want to Blog?

1) Why are you interested in blogging?

2) Who is your audience? (Who are you trying to impress/motivate/agitate?)

3) What objectives are you trying to meet?

4) How will we know when we get there? (metrics)

5) What’s the value of accomplishing your objectives?


IF YOU CAN’T PRODUCE QUALITY CONTENT ON A REGULAR BASIS THEN DON’T START A BLOG.


www.marketingsavant.com 888.989.7771 The MarketingSavant Group

The Thought Leadership Blogging Equation

Competence, purpose and core market

understanding inform the point of view & thought

leadership platform. Thought leaders outshine

their competitors who compete on price and

advertising.

Strategic use of TLM tools and channels with media collaboration garner your share voice in the industry

and spark the industry dialogue around your

ideas. As buyers seek out more

real market dialogue, SOV is an increasingly important

factor contributing to marketplace success.

Thought leaders and trusted advisors occupy

the greatest share of mind among business buyers. Share of mind predicts

share of market. Thought Leadership Marketing steadily increases your

SOM with buyers, growing your share of

market.


Do You Have the Blogger Mindset?

1) They love what they do – energy & motivation 2) They have the drive to teach – no strings attached 3) They reach out and communicate – to everyone 4) They take risks with messaging – on the edge 5) They balance confidence with curiosity & learning –

learn from everyone 6) They put in the time today (TLM activities) for

tomorrow’s benefit 7) They never stop working, connecting and

communicating – not drip marketing, but constant education



To be a blogger – Think and act like a blogger

• Get into the habit of thinking like a blogger – Create a blog idea file.

• Title, links,

• Carry a notebook or use your camera phone to start collecting ideas on the go

• Save links to story ideas using Instapaper, del.icio.us or your browser

• Create a Word doc and jot down ideas for posts

• Start creating great content to help launch your blog

• Practice blogging on your social networking page

• Draft posts offline in LiveWriter or Email

Supergenius Blogger Process



Build Your “Blog Hub”

• One place where your content is housed

• Contains real substance, not just links

• “Connectable platform” (Wordpress, Typepad)

• Your online home base


Tune In! (It’s NOT ABOUT YOU!)

• Subscribe to content

• Consume feeds

• Share content right from reader

• Form a reader-based social network



Create Great Content

• Instructional - Instructional posts tell people how to do something.

• Informational - This is one of the more common blog post types where you simply give information on a topic.

• Reviews - Reviews come in all shapes and sizes and on virtually every product or service you can think of.

• Lists - One of the easiest ways to write a post is to make a list.

• Interviews - Sometimes when you’ve run out of insightful things to say it might be a good idea to let someone else do the talking in an interview (or a guest post).

• Case Studies - Case studies can provide an in-depth perspective.

• Profiles - Profile posts are similar to case studies but focus in on a particular person.

• Link Posts - The good old ‘link post’ is a favorite of many bloggers and is simply a matter of finding a quality post on another site to link to.

• ‘Problem’ Posts - This is similar to a review post (above) but focuses more upon the negatives of a product or service.

• Contrasting two options - Write a post contrasting two products, services or approaches that outlines the positives and negatives of each choice.

• Rant - Get passionate, stir yourself up, say what’s on your mind and tell it like it is. Rants are great for starting discussion and causing a little controversy.

• Inspirational - On the flip side to the angry rant (and not all rants have to be angry) are inspirational and motivational pieces.

• Research - Research posts can take a lot of time but they can also be well worth it if you come up with interesting conclusions that inspire people to link up to you.

• Collation Posts - These are a strange combination of research and link posts.

• Prediction and Review Posts - We see a lot of these at the end and start of the year where people do their ‘year in review’ posts and look at the year ahead and predict what developments might happen in their niche in the coming months.

• Critique Posts - ‘Attack posts’ have always been a part of blogging

• Debate - Debates do well on blogs and can either in an organized fashion between two people, between a blogger and ‘all comers’ or even between a blogger and…

• Hypothetical Posts - Pick a something that ‘could’ happen down the track in your industry and begin to unpack what the implications of it would be.

• Satirical - Well written satire or parody can be incredibly powerful and is brilliant for generating links for your blog.

• Memes and Projects - write a post that somehow involves your readers and gets them to replicate it in some way.



Share, Link and Guide

• What will your audience find useful?

• Share competitors info – it drives them nuts, and gets them to link to you!

• Easy, time-conscious way to stay relevant without creating original content



Make Your Content Work (Harder) For You



Map it Out



Leave Tangible Digital Artifacts



Syndicate & Synchronize


• 25% reduction in marketing spend

• Major account wins

• Entire organization involved in the ‘community’

Thought Leadership Blogger Indium Corporation


Thought Leadership Blogger Indium Corporation

“[Being a Thought Leader] is being considered the best, most authoritative, trusted source. It means being the “go to” people. It means being given the first look, being invited into a development project and asked for advice. It means being the organization that others MUST HAVE involved with a project. And it all leads to increased sales, profits, and image or it simply didn’t matter..”

Rick Short, Indium



A Day in the Life of a Supergenius Blogger

• One to two blog posts • 3-8 Twitter updates • Listen (read) top 100 –

1000 RSS articles from your feeds

• Share 15-20 articles via Google Reader

• Comment on 1-3 key blog posts from peers

• 3-8 Delicious bookmarks • Facebook, LinkedIn &

other network activity


Supergenius vs. The Other Guys

Supergenius Blogger

• Reads everything through RSS & email

• Posts once and publishes to many outlets (dlvr.it, Posterous, linked accounts)

• Shares content via Google Reader

• Leaves tangible digital artifacts

Other Guy

• Jumps around to websites to read content (loses 30 minutes)

• Publishes via individual web interfaces (loses 15 minutes)

• Manually Tweets out links from articles & blog posts (loses 20 mintues)

• Slurps up others crap as their own (waste of time)



Supergenius Blogger Toolkit

• Google Reader • Wordpress • Google Analytics • Posterous • Instapaper • Delicious • Twitter • Dlvr.it account • Windows LiveWriter or

Scribefire • Mindmapping software • Industry newsletters

via: WWW.VIRTU-ASSIST.COM



Remember…

• Start your blog with a purpose

• Produce quality content on a regular basis

• Follow a plan to vary your types of posting

• Follow a process to ensure make blogging high impact

• Participate to position yourself as a thought leader in your market space

• Play nice. This is supposed to be fun


After-Event Slides & Resources

• The slides and resource links are available electronically after the event:

www.marketingsavant.com/supergenius


The MarketingSavant Group

How to Create and Promote Your Blog

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