What to Write on your Blog and Why

Maintaining a ‘blog’ or news section on your website is a great way of updating customers about news, views and events from your business or industry. Not to mention it’s very search engine friendly and will keep your website well ranked (and therefore found) in Google and other search  engines.

If you have a five page site and no blog, then you have five chances to rank in search engines. If you have a five page site and a blog with hundreds of posts, you have hundreds of chances to rank. A recent survey suggests that companies who blog receive 97% more inbound links than those who don’t. Inbound links are important because they signal authority to search engines, thus increasing your chances of getting found in those search engines.

One warning – a news blog can be very time consuming, and is only effective if constantly updated. It is not always easy to come up with new content and ideas, so we’ve put together some helpful tips using a hotel website as the example.

Example – A hotel blog

Your team

Make it personal and friendly by introducing yourself and your team. Provide details of your views, interests, observations on life/hotel business, etc.

News

Use a variety of news stories, events and/or comments to add your own feedback and perspective. Using a popular story already in the news is a good way to write a topical and interesting post.

Attractions and events

Provide details of what’s happening in your area; upcoming and past events, places of interest, various attractions etc. People use search engines to find these details and could very well want somewhere to stay as well.

Check lists

Create top 10 lists that are in some way related to your hotel or region. These can be about things to do, things not to do, restaurants to visit, places to avoid, best attractions etc. Make sure that at least some of the items are exclusive to you to entice guests to stay with you.

Photos

Add a photo with an original caption to your article to enhance its presentation and attract attention. Sometimes a good photo and a few lines is all you need to draw a reader’s attention to it.

Too busy to blog?

If you’re too busy to maintain a blog, outsource or delegate this task to other staff members. Select individuals that are knowledgeable and comfortable writing about the areas you would like to cover.

Train your staff on the editorial guidelines and decide what type of writing and editing process you would like to put in place. Some companies prefer to elect an editor or group of editors to have a final look at all blog posts, while other companies allow their bloggers to publish directly. Figure out the level of comfort you have with your blogging, editing and publishing process and implement a procedure that works well for your team.

Be aware that if you open up your blog for feedback, which you should, you will get a variety of comments — constructive, complimentary, hateful, and spam. Be prepared for everything. Create a comment policy that your team can follow, and make sure everyone is on same page. Outline the types of comments that should be responded to, deleted or passed along for follow-up.

Sharing your news posts

The ideal scenario is to use your blog as a focal point of other social media. Facebook and Twitter are a good start, and YouTube is a must for video-sharing. When you post on your blog, announce the new post on your social networks and ask for your readers’ opinions on the subject.

Make sure your blog is open for comments and utilizes share tools, such as Facebook and Twitter. Share tools allow your readers to pass along your content, thereby doing all the promotion work for you.

Oftentimes, companies shy away from opening up their websites and blogs for commenting and interaction, because they are afraid of the harm that criticisms may cause. Make it a policy to welcome criticism, thinking of it as an opportunity for feedback and improvement. There are lots of ways to deal with negative feedback, so don’t be afraid to open up to your community.

Designing With Web Standards

Web standards are a set of best practices for building websites.

Just like there are standards for building solid, long-lasting houses, there are standards for building websites so they are more stable and viable for the future.

A site built with web standards is a sound investment and will add value to a business, increasing its longevity and sustainability.

Standards-based sites are faster and more search engine friendly. They also are more scaleable, more accessible to those with disabilities and render more consistently across browsers. Read more

The Importance of Branding

Brands are a big business today because they make selling easier in person and online. People prefer to buy from companies they feel they know and can trust, and brands put forth that assurance.

Many people think that the logo is the brand. In fact, the logo is just one representation of the brand. Your brand isn’t how you look or what you say or even what you sell. Your brand is what people believe you stand for.

When people are aware of your brand, they’re aware of the positive characteristics you stand for. Long before they get ready to make a purchase, they feel they know who you are and what unique value they can count on you to deliver. As a result, when it comes time to make a sale, brand owners can concentrate on the wants and needs of the consumer rather than take up valuable consumer time trying to explain themselves and their unique attributes.

Without a brand, you have to build a case for why you deserve the consumer’s business every single time you get ready to make a sale. While brand owners are closing the deal, those without strong brands are still introducing themselves.

“If Coca Cola were to lose all of its production-related assets in a disaster, the company would survive. By contrast, if all consumers were to have a sudden lapse of memory and forget everything related to Coca Cola, the company would go out of business.”

As an advocate for your brand, you’re not always there to tell your story, so you need to make sure that your marketing materials give people that same sense of who you are. Intelligent use of design, advertising, marketing, corporate culture and so on can all really help to generate associations in people’s minds that will benefit the organisation.

Design and Branding

An established technique in branding a business is to tell its story through communication elements such as corporate identity, packaging, stationery, marketing materials and so on. Whatever sector your work in, keeping your communications fresh is essential. Using designers to help reassess your designs, language or identity every few years should be seen as an ongoing investment in your company rather than a costly extra.

After working through a branding project with designers you should be left with something called brand guidelines. This is a document which details exactly how the different design elements (typically visual) should be applied in different situations. It will give information on things like typography, graphics, colours, materials, templates and photography used in the brand, providing instructions on how to apply them in different contexts, at different scales and so on. More detailed brand guidelines may include things like cultural or behavioural directions for staff training.

The organisation can use these brand guidelines to manage the brand after the designer’s work on the project is completed without losing the original consistency and clarity of the designs and, most importantly, with losing sight of your original brand vision.