BLOGGING 101

Lois Paul and Partners

WHAT’S THE VALUE OF BLOGGING?

Add personal voice to the brand

Establish thought leadership

Build an engaged community

Communicate with customers, partners, and prospects

Humanize the brand by adding a face to the company

Support business communications initiatives

OBJECTIVES

Establish thought leadership and educate the market

Increase brand visibility and awareness

Increase SEO via inbound and outbound links

Build relationships with influencers and customers

Lead the conversation and become a trusted source of information

Humanize the brand by fostering the “voice” of company experts, customers and influencers

Drive demand and leads

CONTENT GUIDELINES

Suggested Blog Length. Posts are typically 400-500 words. While most blog posts tend to be in a block-paragraph format, there are other different approaches you can experiment with.

Linking. Include links in every post to provide context to your points (especially when referencing and citing statistics or other content). Link to other bloggers as this is a way to engage in dialogue.

Headlines are important. Attention spans are shrinking rapidly – write your posts with this in mind, starting with the headline. Try writing headlines as questions, using the words “How” and “Why.”

Leverage video and photos. This can include: graphs, charts, screenshots, photos, etc. Remember to credit the source.

Writing a corporate blog? Practice professionalism and business etiquette when commenting on something. Check spelling and grammar!

CONVERSATION GUIDELINES

Start a conversation. Avoid marketing-speak or sounding like a press release. It is also important to pose questions to readers. Engage the audience, don’t just present.

Be authentic. Authenticity is the foundation of trust. Your posts should reflect genuine opinions based on personal and/or professional experience, and language should flow naturally.

Controversial Posts. These topics attract attention but bloggers should never disparage the competition or write for the sake of controversy.

Current Events. Comment on other industry blogs or share your viewpoint around a current event or industry trend, providing added-value commentary to engage readers in conversation.

Maintain a thick skin. Don’t write a blog post unless you can answer all questions -- good and bad -- professionally, quickly, and nicely.

CONVERSION GUIDELINES

Evergreen Topics. In order to give your posts a longer shelf life, try writing blog posts that readers can bookmark and turn to for guidance and helpful references.

Case Studies. Consider writing blog posts about client projects, success stories, award-winning work and other case studies in order to increase brand visibility and lead generation.

Write for them, not for you. Readers are interested in hearing what you have to say; especially in terms of the challenges they face and how you are equipping/could equip them to overcome those challenges.

BLOGGING APPROACHES

Industry Insight. Commentary on industry topic “of the moment”

Technical Drill Downs. Technology

features, “under the covers”

How-To. Step-by-step on how

to tackle specific challenges

Personal to Industry. Share personal

experience that can be related an issue in the

industry/market

Guest Blogging. Great way to build relationships with

clients, prospects and influencers

Detractor Blogging. Take a viewpoint that

opposes another blogger for a constructive online

debate

Link Blogging. Share links to

articles/posts you’ve found informative

List Blogging. "11 Business Tactics You

Should Know“

Event Blogging. Share highlights or

recap an industry event

Survey Blogging. Ask question(s) related

to an issue for an industry pulse

Video Blogging. Use video in place of

text as primary content

Feature Blogging. Develop an in-depth

feature around a topic or person

Response Blogging. Respond to influencer

posts with cross-linking

Blog Series. Explore a topic by

dedicating a post to each major aspect