Megan Gilbert and Zontee Hou
Megan Gilbert has greater than 10 years experience in communications and public members of the family for corporate, healthcare, purchaser items, retail and hospitality. At Convince & Convert, she prepares social media and content material audits, responds to and counsels groups, with an emphasis on editorial calendars, social media promotions, and network control high-quality practices.
Zontee Hou is a strategist at Convince & Convert, where she advises agencies ranging from Allstate Insurance to Indiana University. Her nearly 10 years in advertising has garnered enterprise recognition, which include numerous PR News Platinum Awards and a Forrester Groundswell Award. She is the founder of New York-based consultancy Media Volery, an accessory professor inside the City College of New York’s graduate communications program, and a speaker at events across the country.
Corporate blogs have turn out to be de rigueur within the social and content advertising worlds as automobiles to construct authority, share insights, foster community and offer price. As an fundamental a part of your advertising and marketing portfolio, it’s more vital than ever to genuinely positioned a few elbow grease into making your blog the first-class it is able to be. If you’ve already got the fundamentals down, but you’re seeking to take your corporate weblog to the subsequent level, come be a part of us!
Last month, we started a new series, asking you to put up your corporate weblog for some free advice from Convince & Convert. This month, we percentage with you our first evaluate: Voyageur Outward Bound School.
Richard Stuart, advertising manager and teacher, wrote in asking for assist with their blog. He stated:
We have advanced a keyword strategy that knowledgeable fifty two weblog titles that we are publishing weekly with workforce writing the posts in their personal voice and unluckily the posts are not receiving remarks or being shared as plenty as we would like.The Low-Down: What’s Working
First off, VOBS is doing plenty proper. Its blog is doing a few of the things we advised in our previous blog post including sharing numerous points of view (including specialists), and the usage of compelling pics that supplement the textual content. However, there are absolutely opportunities to make it extra enticing.The Basics: Quick Fixes
Use and put into effect classes. For readers touring your blog via search or hyperlinks from other sites, clear navigation can maintain them browsing the site in place of bouncing if they don’t see the statistics they need right away. Adding classes in your weblog posts (and a “Categories” widget at the sidebar of your blog) that are relevant on your target audience is one manner to add clarity. For VOBS, categories might consist of “My Campsite Story” (personal stories) or “Expert Tips” (hints on kayaking, tenting, etc.).
Consider the alternatives for sharing. Currently, readers can percentage blog posts on VOBS via Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and e mail. However, if VOBS finds that certain social channels get less play than others, it should tweak the options to match its target market’s wishes. Images are currently pinnable on the weblog, that is great, but having a “Pin” button in the “Share this” menu may be greater apparent for the informal person. VOBS presently makes use of pull charges to break up its weblog posts (which is a exceptional manner to make longer blog posts greater visually exciting), but what about including a “tweet this” choice to make the ones quotes instantly shareable?
Make the calls-to-action clearer. On the blog’s index web page, the “Comments” link is very difficult to see (a light gray). An easy fix is to alternate the CSS to make the “Comments” button say “Leave a comment” whilst there are 0 feedback or “Read 2 remarks” whilst there are comments.
Likewise, the position of the “Read extra” button is a little counter-intuitive above the weblog put up excerpt. Place it on the quit of the blurb and use color to make it extra compelling—again, this is an easy CSS trade on the way to make it more likely that the reader will click thru.
Cross-link to associated content. Currently, there aren’t many hyperlinks to different components of the VOBS website and/or different websites from the weblog. This is an easy way to add price to (and affect the leap rate of) the weblog. Consider adding associated links (whether truely having authors manually write a bulleted listing of 3-5 related weblog posts and linking to them or the usage of a WordPress plugin) to create possibilities for your target market to find out associated content.Beyond the Basics: Intermediate Changes
The electricity of pics. We all recognize that visible content has become a mainstay in content material advertising. This is true on Twitter, Facebook and – yes – your corporate blog. The VOBS blog uses pics in a lot of its posts however lays them out as you'll count on to peer in a e-newsletter. Today’s blog reader isn't always yesterday’s newsletter reader. Often instances, your reader expects a whole storyline – or as a minimum the salient factors – from pix. If a reader (who is genuinely browsing, no longer studying) has to read the textual content and scroll down a web page to see your pix, you run the chance of losing them. Use slideshows at the start of posts to provide readers the possibility to see your tale.
Develop content material from social guidelines. VOBS is on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Flickr, YouTube, Pinterest and LinkedIn. That’s seven structures that could offer hints for the VOBS weblog. Often times, whilst a organisation or emblem is energetic in social media, most strength is spent creating content material, building an target audience and responding to remarks on that platform. The cycle then repeats.
Not absolutely everyone thinks to use those structures as resources for content material thoughts. Social content material that receives better than everyday engagement is a tip-off for a publish idea. If a fan or follower poses a query that warrants extra than a tweet or Facebook response, write a blog put up. If there’s a question that is asked with regularity, solution it with a weblog put up. It’s a given that social media is a platform for 2-manner dialogue, however many businesses leave out the opportunities which can be supplied to them thru their social audiences. VOBS doesn’t should be one among them.
Attract interest with headlines. We recognise writing headlines isn’t clean. It’s downright complicated. How do you tell and hook and make a clear promise to your reader in 68 characters? Writing headlines is like solving a hard crossword puzzle: You regularly take a stab at an answer (in pencil, thoughts you) after which take a step back to ensure it’s the right one.
The VOBS blog has splendid tries at headlines and others that need a few paintings. For instance, in the post titled “10 Essential Sea Kayaking Tips,” the reader is aware of what facts they'll analyze in the event that they commit to reading the publish. However, the name “Grit is Key, But How do You Learn It?” is indistinct and leaves the reader guessing whether or now not they may locate price from the submit. Guesswork is your enemy. It places your reader in a function to decide whether or not or now not the publish could be precious. You want your headline to get rid of as lots guesswork as viable. We these days published a number of headline-writing guidelines that may help VOBS adjust its approach.It’s a Marathon, Not a Sprint: Long-Term Planning
Define your editorial approach. When Richard wrote in to Blog Rescue, he instructed us one in every of his desires become to apply the blog as a positioning platform. VOBS wants to be seen as a thought leader in its enterprise, the use of the weblog to demonstrate the energy of its programs and the organization’s information of the humans it influences. This is step one in growing a long-status editorial method.
As an organisation, you've got in order to articulate what it's far you want to be seen for and referred to as. Once you try this, you may start to think about the storylines that make up that aspiration. Our Convince & Convert crew creates content material pillars for clients that may be carried out to a unmarried platform or to an entire content software. The function of content pillars is easy: they manual your editorial technique and content material creation.
In addition to defining content material pillars, VOBS should take a look at the tone of its content. For a determine searching for answers for a youngster missing self belief, what’s going to resonate? A VOBS instructor speakme approximately a way to expand man or woman in young children, or the attitude of a once-indignant teen who realizes he’s capable of more than he ever thought possible whilst on a canoe excursion? These are the types of questions that need to be requested: 1st person vs. third person. Slideshow submit vs. text-based post. Essay style vs. a list put up. Always think about exceptional approaches to tell a story, to illustrate a point and to hook up with a potential client.
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