Branding with a Blog
Very much like a brand, a blog takes time to develop, establish and grow. If you aren’t planning to spend significant time developing your blog, then give up. If you want a quick fix, hire an agency to do it and stop reading this article.
Okay then, let’s get down to it. So by now you know that audiences are no longer waiting around to receive neatly packaged messages from you. They are on the web, searching like hungry dogs for content. So give it to them. Blogging does big things for your brand, but as with any social media tactic, there are also some caveats.
Brand Benefit: Uncensored Feedback
Brand Caveat: You’re going to get honest feedback from blog comments so make sure you have the ability to approve them before they appear on the blog. You don’t want to have another Skittles fiasco on your hands.
Brand Benefit: Free Publicity
Brand Caveat: Talking incessantly about your company or products won’t get you any new readers. Talking about your company or your products in relation to your audience might. Talking about things your audience values will.
Brand Benefit: Establish Personality
Brand Caveat: If you’ve got Steve from Sales (who constantly talks about all your new products) writing your blog because he’s the only one who has time, please reconsider. You also want to avoid ‘blogging by committee’ by limiting legal department’s control over your blog. Choose an in-house editor who embodies your brand values and who’s writing style is compatible with the voice of your brand.
Brand Benefit: SEO
Brand Caveat: Make sure you’re not worrying so much about SEO that your blog posts look like keyword lists. This also applies to links. Adding a link to another section of your site a couple times a post is acceptable. If your paragraph looks like a rainbow it’s time to settle down.
Brand Benefit: Increase Transparency
Brand Caveat: Avoid talking about how your latest Marketing campaign bombed or how the CEO is a jerk. Oh and never post anything about bathrooms. Ever.
Blogging is a serious endeavor that, when done right can do great things for your brand, but when done badly is really hard to undo. Here are some examples of companies that are doing it right. Take a look before you leap.
Coco-Cola
American Express
Dell
Fisk-a-teers
Cisco
Kodak
Southwest
Mint
Zappos
Sharpie
Beth LaPierre is a Brand + Creative Strategist. When Beth is not helping build brands she’s on her snowboard, spray painting something, or drinking copious amounts of espresso. Follow Beth on Twitter.
Amazing article and love how you portray a blog as branding, very smart. The points you gave are definitely needed to make your blog a success, without these important point’s then your blog is doomed in my opinion. I am really intrigued in one particular brand benefit and that is “Personality”, often I have seen plenty of blogs seem DULL and so on, personality is a big yes, you need to pull in your readers with your own personality and to be honest, would love to see fuelyourblogging show different personality examples of blogs that do this effectively, like blogs that love to give humour in their posts, addressing serious points, a personality that loves to debate pros and cons in their blogs and even to the point how to spot a blogger who doesn’t take interest or pride from a blogger who loves what they do and show this in their personality.
But yeah, excellent post, found it very interesting Beth.
Very much like a brand, a blog takes time to develop, establish and grow. If you aren’t planning to spend significant time developing your blog, then give up. If you want a quick fix, hire an agency to do it and stop reading this article.
Unfortunately the brand examples you gave are all corporations who have the financial resources to hire whomever they choose. All of the advantage of having a blog as you so accurately explained are primarily of interest to people who aren’t corporate professional people and who don’t have the financial resources to just hand it off for design, seo,content, security and other critical areas. Additionally, they are not the type of people who give up and are typically supportive of others opinions and their brands.
I regret this isn’t going to be one of those times.
I think you overlooked the most important part–”If you aren’t planning to spend significant time developing your blog, then give up.”
Design, SEO, content writing, etc. is extremely time consuming. If you’re not willing to post something that is valuable to your readers at least once a week, then don’t bother…or hire an agency or external resource to do it for you.
I’ll admit I did open the door for that one by not including SMB blogs. If you dig a little deeper, you’ll find my list does include in-house blogs, but here are a couple good examples of small companies that have gotten big exposure with blogging.
Information Storage Company > http://esgblogs.typepad.com/steves_it_rants/
Non-Profit technology company > http://www.501agency.com/missionology/
Ecofriendly Gift Dealer > http://www.go-green.ae/
Small Coffee Franchise > http://www.gimmecoffee.com/blog/
Branding with a blog has its benefits and risks. If done the right way, it can be effective. If done the wrong way, well just ask Skittles – and Dell.
Even though Dell is featured in this article, they got off to a VERY rough start – just do a google search, or buy the book, for Jeff Jarvis.
Just started a blog. This advice is invaluable. Yesterday I spent a lot of time learning how to embed an rss feed. I’m trying not to get overwhelmed. I started getting frustrated. But I have to take it step by step, day by day. Thanks for the tips.