I have referenced in a number of posts my feelings about the importance of companies having a blog and have realized that unless you are immersed in social media or online content management, grasping the significance of a blog or even understanding how to go about creating one may be a stumbling block for getting started. The initial question that seems to come up is not so much “why should I blog” but rather “who will read my blog” or “how will blogging help me reach my audience?”
Blogging is like any other aspect of social media in that it should be social, interactive, a two-way conversation, which means that you will have to do more than just write; you will also have to promote the blog and invite people to read it. By informing your customers through your ads, your existing website, conversations, marketing materials, and cross-link programs that you have a blog, you will be able to at least attract your existing clients and those you reach through marketing. If you properly optimize your blog, pay attention to writing with keywords, including links to useful resources in your posts, and blog regularly, search engines will find and index your blog which means people who don’t yet know about you can find you as they’re surfing the internet. Take it one step further and include a link to your blog posts on your Twitter account, in your responses to posts on message boards, and get your blog listed in blog catalogs so that you can reach an entirely new audience with your content. Blogging can help you reach your audience because you will be giving them something new to read every time they come to your site, you are inviting them to participate and communicate with you through the blog, and you will be building your brand through content that can be shared indefinitely by yourself and visitors to your site. Once you embrace the idea of blogging as a way of communicating and interacting and decide to integrate it into your marketing and public relations plan, you have to find something to write about.
Writing Ideas
Not everyone likes to write and I can certainly appreciate that the less you like to write the more challenging blogging becomes. If you are thinking about blogging the same way you think about writing copy for your ads, promotional lingo for your marketing collateral, or a press release, the first step is to change your thinking. Blogging is an opportunity to engage an audience by showing a personality, telling a story, giving insight and sharing information beyond what you can normally accomplish in other print or online content. You don’t need to be launching a new boat or introducing a new product just to write a blog. So what should you write about?
A recent post from Online Journalism Blog shared a great list of 12 ideas for blog posts. The author’s ideas easily translate to the marine industry and offer enough starting points for anyone to overcome writer’s block. His ideas are in bold and my interpretation of them follows:
- Respond to something elsewhere on the web. Do a Google search for your company and find blogs or message boards mentioning your company, brand, or product. Simply copy and paste a significant line (good or bad), quote the source, and respond.
- Suggest an idea. Your blog begins with something like “We’re thinking about adding a pilothouse design to our existing models. What would you suggest its main features include to fit a hypothetical cruising couple?” Invite editors and buyers to contribute feedback and you have a blog post! Tom Tripp had great success with this on his recent OceanLines series about outfitting a Kadey-Krogen helm station.
- Interview someone. This could be the CEO of the company, your naval architect, a customer who uses your product, one of your dealers or distributors. Interviews are an opportunity to put a face to your company and a personality to the blog.
- Blog an event. Boat shows, rendezvous, owners’ meetings, open houses…tons of blog opportunities in our industry.
- Ask a question. Once you have developed traffic to your blog site, an individual blog could be as simply as asking people about their summer cruising plans. Ask them to send you their stories and photos for inclusion in the blog. Or, take a poll and publish the results as a new blog post.
- Pick a fight. The suggestion here is to respond to someone else’s blog or an article with which you disagree; maybe it’s a recent editorial or something more broad like the state of the economy and what that means for the marine industry.
- Reflect on something. Are you celebrating a major company anniversary or the sale of a certain number of units? Talk about why those are good things and what got you to that point. Or, make it personal and reflect on your own experiences that have helped you connect with boaters and the marine industry.
- Do something visual. Share photos, videos, diagrams. Visuals appeal to the senses of your site visitors and can appeal to their emotions as well as help put your company in perspective. Show them how they can enjoy your product.
- Review something. While it can be self-serving to review your own products, it can’t hurt to blog in detail about your newest offering. Or, share someone else’s review (with their permission, of course).
- Make a list. Top 10 places people cruise in your boats. Most creative uses for your product. Top five success stories of your company. 101 reasons to come visit you at the next boat show.
- Write a how-to. I strongly believe in educating consumers. Rather than tell them why your product is the best, explain to consumers how it works, what problem it solves, and how it relates to other systems on a boat. If you can write a how-to that doesn’t even include your product, even better in my mind because it shows the consumer that you know more about the bigger picture of boating than just your own product.
- Let someone else post. Otherwise known as guest blogging. Invite one of your customers, a company you partner with, an editor, or even someone else within your own company contribute to your blog.
Or, you can do what I just did and blog about someone else’s blog. At the very least it gives you something to write about and by putting your own twist on it and applying it to your own company, you will give site visitors something new to think about.
Comments on this entry are closed.