If your online marketing strategy includes corporate blogging, then I have one challenge for you concerning your blog. Remember from my last article, we are supposed to remember to internalize the idea that our corporate blogs are to gain leads. On that note, I have a word I want you to concentrate on (a phrase really) that makes marketers drool: inbound marketing.
Content Makes Your Blog a Foundation for Inbound Marketing
Seriously? Yes. Seriously. But you have to use it the right way. And that comes down to the content. I have read so many blog articles and books about the importance of content, and I agree with them. Content should be informative, helpful, funny, inspire awe, and yes, content is king. I get it. But there are so many blogs and websites out there that it seems like all the good content has been taken up. It can be a little discouraging. At times, it can even be daunting. But the truth is, in order for your blog to be a foundation for inbound marketing, in order for people to want to share it with others, your content needs to be really, really good. So good, in fact, that people will want to share it. And that takes time.
An Inbound Marketing Challenge for You and Your Blog
Now, before I scare you anymore, I have an answer for this so it doesn’t seem so daunting. It’s based on the writings of one of my favorite bloggers, Leo Babauta, who blogs over at Zen Habits. After reading his blog for several years, it’s clear to me that we need to apply one of his mantras about creating healthy habits to this whole blogging thing: just do one thing at a time. So I’m going to give you a challenge for your business blog: plan ONE really cool piece of content.
One really cool piece of content can help make your blog THE foundation for inbound marketing that it can be. My biggest piece of advice about this one really cool piece of content, is that you make it embeddable (implicitly shareable) content. What happens with embeddable content is that people reuse it! When they do that, that content gets pointed back to your blog or website!
Share and Make Shareable
Consider this really cool piece of content an artifact. It is an artifact of your business. So treat it like gold. Here are some things you are going to want to do with that artifact during its “life”time:
- Make sure to create the metadata (tags) for it
- Support it yourself by posting it to sites like Digg, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Ask your friends, followers, and fans to share it, tweet it, repost it for you
- Make sure you have your social sharing buttons enabled in the post in which it belongs
Slow down for a minute and realize the importance of REALLY good SHAREABLE content. Stop writing and rehashing the stuff you’ve already seen online. Take the time this week, this month (however long it takes depending on how much time you have) to create a really shareable piece of content, a piece of content that you can place in your blog post as say, an image, an infographic, a video, a PDF – and be sure you include credit to your website in a way that is not easily removed from the content. A piece of content that really, truly is a help in some way to your customers. Then come back and let us know what you did, and how it worked for you.
You can do it! I know you can!
Thanks to Funchye at Flickr for the great sharing photo
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