MackCollier.com

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Five Signs Your Company is Ready For a Brand Ambassador Program

If this is your idea of a 'Brand Ambassador' then stop reading.
If this is your idea of a ‘Brand Ambassador’ then stop reading.

Just like not every company should be using social media, not every company should or can launch a Brand Ambassador program.  There are certain conditions that need to exist within your company before you can start planning out taking the leap of launching a Brand Ambassador program.  Here’s five things you should look for:

1 – Your company looks for and values direct communication with its customers.  Direct communication is vital for the success of a Brand Ambassador program, so if your company doesn’t value communication and feedback from its customers, that’s a big red flag.  Companies that are primed to launch a successful Brand Ambassador program understand the value of keeping open lines of communication with its customers and seek out their feedback.

2 – Your company already has programs in place that organize its customers.  This could be a referral or loyalty program, or something like a Brand Advisory Panel.  The existence of such programs is another sign that your company is comfortable working with its customers, which is a precursor to launching a full-scale Brand Ambassador program.

3 – Excellent customer service is a point of pride in your organization.  This shows that your company values its customers and their satisfaction.  It also shows that they understand that customers are more than simply a transaction, and that type of mentality is vital to the success of a Brand Ambassador program.

4 – Your company has a robust social media monitoring program in place as well as a structure for responding to customers.  This shows that your company is already used to actively monitoring what its customers are saying online, and is comfortable responding to these customers.  It also shows that your company has a better sense for who its customers are, since it is constantly interacting with them.  This makes it easier for them to identify existing fans and to understand them as well.

5 – Your fans are already proactively contacting your company.  A byproduct of having systems in place that allow direct interaction with your customers is that your most passionate customers (fans) will start reaching out proactively.  They are looking for ways to better connect with you and better help other customers learn about you and discover why they should love your brand as much as your fans do.

 

All of these signs point to a company that is comfortable connecting with its customers and understands the business value of doing so.  With many companies, they hear about the concept of a Brand Ambassador program and think ‘Hey! That would be awesome to have our customers out there selling for us and spreading positive Word of Mouth about us!’  Companies that actively connect with their customers understand that the value of these connections is far more than simply creating new salespeople.  These companies understand that communicating directly with customers and helping them increases customer loyalty.  And feedback from customers, which can be acted on to make marketing, product design and really all areas of the business more effective and efficient.

The companies that are truly ready to create an amazing Brand Ambassador program love their customers and are constantly looking for ways to create more value for them.  The companies that aren’t ready for a Brand Ambassador program are the ones that view their customers as transactions, not people.

Finally, any successful Brand Ambassador program has to have buy-in from the top.  Unless the CEO is on board with creating a Brand Ambassador program, it’s not happening.  A Brand Ambassador program is a long-term investment, and if done correctly, it works wonderfully well by creating value for your customers and at the same time giving your customers the tools and assets they need to create additional value for your company.  A true win-win scenario, but that only happens if your CEO is willing to view your customers as partners, not transactions.

 

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In a Hyper-Connected World, Trust Is More Important Than a Sale

ShoppingYears ago I spent a summer working as a vendor for a company that provided lawn care products to chains such as Lowe’s.  I was very lucky in that my trainer was a professional landscaper.  So instead of telling me how to sell the products, he understood his craft well enough to tell me how to solve problems for customers.  He would tell me which chemical was best for ridding a lawn of a certain insect, and then tell me which products (ours as well as competitors) had that chemical.

Then he taught me something even more important: He taught me that it was ok to tell customers that their best option was a product that we did not sell.  He said that these same customers would be coming back to this store, and if I told them the right product to buy to solve their problem (even if it was a competitor) that they would come back and buy more products from me.

As a vendor, my job through the week was to keep the shelves and displays stocked, then on Saturday I would be in the stores selling.   Basically I would be waiting on the aisle that had our products, helping customers that came by.  Usually, another vendor from our main competitor would be there.  Typically, when a customer would walk up to him the customer would tell them what type of bugs were in their lawn and the vendor would say ‘Well we have a product to get rid of them, here you go!’  When a customer would come up to me, instead I was taught to ask them more about their lawn so I could diagnose their problem.  Then I would educate them on the chemicals they needed and the products that had these chemicals.  And sometimes I convinced them to buy a competitor’s product, but better than that I gave them the product to solve their problem.  I was selling solutions to problems while the other guy was selling his products.  One day a customer came down our isle and the other vendor pounced “Can I help you?”, ‘Nope!”, replied the customer, “I want to talk to him!” and he pointed at me.  He then came over with his wife and explained to her that he had come in last week looking for a product (a competitor’s) and that I had convinced him to buy the product that worked.  He said he had come back cause he wanted to get rid of another type of insect, and this time my company did make the best product for that.

He came back because even though I hadn’t made the first sale, with that first sale I won his trust.  Which is far more important than winning the sale.  Trust creates more positive WOM than pushing a product that doesn’t solve the customers problem, just to make a sale.

You earn a customers’ trust by showing them that you care about them as people, not as a potential transaction.  When you solve a customers’ problem, you win their trust.  When you win their trust, you will have them as a customer for as long as you have their trust.  The huge additional benefit is that trust transfers.  If you win the trust of Betty, she will then go tell her friend Sarah about your brand.  Sarah doesn’t know or trust your brand, but she knows and trusts her friend Betty.  So when Betty suggests to Sarah that she should buy your brand, she buys your brand.  Trust transfers and spreads in a hyper-connected world like the one we live in.

What’s more important today: Making a sale, or winning your customer’s trust?

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What’s the Difference Between a Brand Ambassador Program and an Outreach Program?

Influencer Marketing and working with Brand Ambassadors are two of the hottest areas in marketing today, but they are completely different tactics often aimed at completely different audiences.  So what’s the difference?

A Brand Ambassador program is where the company and its customers (fans) have a sort of informal and ongoing relationship.  Typically, the participants in a Brand Ambassador program have signed up with the company, so they are raising their hands and telling the brand that they want to work directly with them.  Most Brand Ambassadors are compensated for their involvement.  That compensation could be in the form of cash, or products, or discounts on products, or greater access to the brand, or possibly all of the above.  The benefit to the brand is that it gives them a way to stay connected with its most passionate fans, so they can work with those fans to help them better promote the brand’s products to others, but also the brand can get valuable feedback from its ambassadors and apply that feedback to the business and product cycle.  The Brand Ambassador benefits by having a closer connection to a brand it loves and supports.  Often, Brand Ambassadors will get advance access to upcoming products or projects, and get to go ‘behind the scenes’ at the brand, and are given a level of access that the average customer could never gain.  If the Brand Ambassador program is organized and executed properly, there are clear and obvious benefits to both the brand and its Brand Ambassadors.

For example, Chick-Fil-A has a program where it works with moms, #ChickFilAMoms. It will send them coupons for certain items and also promote certain items to them (especially new menu items). CFA tries to get the moms to try the items, but they also want the moms to tell other moms about the products so they’ll give them coupons but also instructions on messaging, how to promote the items to other people, etc. The customers will also give feedback on the items and brand experience, and Chick Fil-A can then leverage that feedback for change (see Chick Fil-A launching a Mom’s Valet service for moms that bring kids to Chick Fil-A). Customers opt-in to be a part of the program, it’s all about having an ongoing relationship with fans that have raised their hands and told the brand that they want to help them.

Outreach programs are a bit different.  Typically, these inititiatives are designed to raise awareness among a particular group, often a group of influencers.  For example, if Chick-Fil-A wanted to work with influencers, what they might do was identify say 25 moms that were also ‘influencers’, and fly them into Atlanta and let them spend the day with their chefs, see how the food is prepared, maybe learn more about how CFA works with moms, etc.  As Janice Person explained in a recent MarketingSmarts podcast with Kerry Gorgone (Click to listen), Monsanto brings in foodie bloggers to its partner farms to give them a complete look at the process in bringing food from the field to the table, and along the way they also learn more about Monsanto’s role in helping to facilitate that process.  In both examples, the idea of the outreach is to educate the influencers with the hopes that they will then go and tell others about their experience.

And in that regard, both a Brand Ambassador program and an Outreach program are tactics to drive Word of Mouth.  The tactics are simply aimed at different audiences.  With a Brand Ambassador program, you’re working with an audience (your existing customers) that loves your brand and who is already spreading Word of Mouth about your brand.  You want to work with these customers to help them do a better job of this as well as working with them to gain better product feedback from customers they interact with.  With an Outreach program, you’re dealing with an Influencer that has often built a large and (ideally) engaged online following, and you want to expose them to your brand so that they can share their experiences with their networks.  So the Outreach program is a brand awareness tool as well.

Another way to think of the difference is, an Outreach program is a good way to build awareness for a new product line or initiative, whereas a Brand Ambassador program is a good way to increase the marketing efforts of your customers around an established brand.

Is your company looking for a kick-ass Content Marketing Manager? I’m in the market!  Here’s my details, please email me if you have a remote opening! 

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This Is Why Your Brain Hates Case Studies

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Companies (and their agencies) love sharing case studies. They can be great PR for your business, but they typically aren’t the best way for your brain to learn.

Let’s be honest: Case studies are shared to promote the company and sometimes its agency or partners.  They aren’t positioned as learning tools, they are positioned as promotional tools.  And there’s nothing wrong with that, if a company has done good work and wants to toot its own horn, they should feel fine doing so.

I’m currently looking for a job, most specifically, a Content Marketing Manager or similar position (if you’re hiring, here’s my information).  In talking to B2B companies and agencies, one of the most common needs I am hearing from companies hiring for this position is “We are looking for someone that can help share our client success stories in order to grow our business”.  For B2B companies and agencies, this sharing of case studies makes perfect sense, because it’s proof of concept.

But often, these case studies aren’t positioned in a way that encourages learning.  Too often, case studies are shared, results are given, and takeaways provided. Unfortunately, this isn’t the best way to teach your brain the core concepts that drove success for the case study.  It helps the reader understand the case study, but it doesn’t help the reader understand how to apply the same core concepts to its own business.

Let’s say that your business sells productivity software.  If you share a case study from how your software helped a big-box chain retailer, the reader is going to understand how your software helps in that particular situation.  What you need to do is also share hypothetical or abstract examples that would be more relevant to your targeted audience.  For example, if you want to attract more software clients from the manufacturing industry, you could share your case study from the big-box retailer, but add to it a hypothetical example or two from the manufacturing industry.  Give an example of how a potential client in this space could use your software in the same way as the big-box retailer did.  The added relevance will help the potential client in the manufacturing industry understand how your software could help THEM.

By offering both case studies and hypothetical examples, you make it easier for the brain to both spot and learn the core concepts.  If you only offer the case study, then the brain will learn why the case study worked, but it won’t fully grasp the core concepts, because you are only sharing them in one environment (the case study).  But when you offer the case study AND hypothetical examples, it becomes much easier for the brain to detect (and learn!) the core concept that flows through both the case study and your examples.

The best part? When you marry a great case study with relevant examples that facilitate learning, then you drive more engagement and more interest in your business.  It becomes far easier to see the benefits of working with your business, which also drives more leads.

So if your business wants to make better use of its client case studies, focus on adding relevant hypothetical examples that facilitate learning of the core concepts.  This helps the reader understand why they should work with you and will greatly improve the efficiency of your content marketing efforts.

Or you can just hire me to do it for you!

Pic via Pixabay

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How to Write Your First Blog Post

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Recently a friend asked me a question that any business that begins blogging will have to answer; What should your first blog post be about?  That first blog post is terribly important, because it sets the tone for the blog. Not just for the readers, but for the writers as well.

From the reader’s point of view, I would want to see four areas covered in your first blog post:

1 – Who you are. Tell me about your business, but also introduce me to the blog’s writers.  Share pictures.  The more information about yourself and your business that you share, the easier it will be for me as a reader to trust you.  This is very overlooked by many businesses but we want to see pictures of the people that work for your business and more importantly, those that will be writing for the blog.  It helps us identify and connect with them!

2 – Why you are blogging. Possibly the most important question you can answer, because it will force you to spell out your intentions to your audience.  And as always, consider your audience when answering this question, ask yourself, ‘Why would someone come to this blog, what would they be looking for?’  Hint: They won’t be coming to your blog so that you can market to them.  Maybe you want to share your thoughts on your industry with your readers, or maybe you want to teach them how to do a certain set of skills that tie into your business.  Another way to think about this is to ask yourself ‘What’s in it for the reader?’

3 – What will you be blogging about.  Answering the above question makes this one much easier to answer.  Will you be blogging about your business, or perhaps the lifestyles of your customers?  Spell out the content on your blog so that I know what to expect when I arrive.  And remember that this will also serve as a ‘bookmark’ for your writers to keep them focused on what the goal of your blog is.

4 – How I can leave feedback. Tell me how I can be involved.  Can I leave comments?  Do you encourage comments?  What if I want to email you?  Spell out exactly how I can contact you, and don’t be afraid to encourage feedback, and even disagreement.  In fact this would be a good place to formally spell-out your comment policy, which again can serve as a reference tool for your writers as well.  But do everything you can to make sure that my feedback is appreciated, and encouraged.  If possible, give readers ways to contact you online (such as an email address) and offline (such as your address and phone number).

If your first blog post contains these elements, your business blogging efforts will be off to a fine start!

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Facebook Study Reveals How Brands Can Drive Engagement With Users

Facebook did a study in 2012 to determine what type of content drives engagement on its brand pages.  From the study:

“We examined four weeks of Page posts, across 23 brands and six industries and divided the posts into three types of content:

Messages about the product or service

  • Travel brand example: Our new resort just opened! Book your trip today.

Messages related to the brand

  • Travel brand example: I decided to go on my first cruise because______.

Messages unrelated to the brand

  • Travel brand example: Hang in there everybody. Monday will be over before we know it!

Posts on topics related to the brand, but not specifically about the product or service, were the sole universally significant predictor of all types of engagement.”

The study also clarified that brand content related to the brand but not ABOUT the brand was the top driver of Shares, Likes and Comments for these brands.

Does this surprise you?  It shouldn’t, people will engage with content that taps into the Bigger Idea behind a product or service.  Nike figured this out 30 years ago with the iconic slogan Just Do It.  It’s not about the shoes, it’s about what you do while WEARING the shoes.  If you want to create more engaging content and marketing, think less about promoting yourself, and more about promoting the themes/beliefs/lifestyle that ties into your brand.  Think about why people buy your product and how they use it.  Create content that’s customer-centric instead of product-centric.

For example, check out this commercial from Nike.  Nike’s content and marketing taps into the Bigger Idea about its products.  The product itself is secondary to who its customers are, and why they buy its product.  This COMMERCIAL has been viewed over 4 Million times.

What is Nike selling with this commercial?

https://youtu.be/KSPJkauND68

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The Secret to Doing Real-Time Content Marketing Well: Catch Opportunity When it Falls in Your Lap

If you’re a sports fan, you owe it to yourself to go back and watch the 2012 Daytona 500.  The February race is NASCAR’s biggest event, and it annually kicks off the new season.  In 2012, the Daytona 500 saw multiple rain delays that pushed it to primetime for the first time ever.  NASCAR was actually thrilled with this development as it meant a large audience was going to be exposed to the sport for the first time.  And that audience saw quite the spectacle, indeed.

With 40 laps left in the race, there was a caution that happened when a car on the track had an issue.  As usually happens, trucks were sent out on the track to clean up debris. As this happened, the race cars continue to circle the track at a much slower ‘pace’ speed.  Basically the cars on the track go into a sort of ‘holding pattern’ until the debris on the track is cleared and NASCAR deems the race can continue.

While under caution, one of the cars on the track suddenly lost control and slammed into one of the trucks on track to clear debris. This led to a huge explosion and resulting fire.  Then things got really interesting.  Driver Brad Keselowski just happened to have his smartphone with him in his car and he snapped a photo of the cars on the track, and sent it to Twitter from the race track.  This was the first time that a NASCAR driver had ever tweeted DURING a race!

Brad Kesolowski, Twitter, Daytona 500, Fire, Tide

The tweet itself became a huge deal and Brad gained over 50,000 followers on Twitter in an hour or so.  It also drove a lot of spontaneous attention on Twitter, to the Daytona 500.  Suddenly everyone on Twitter was talking about how ‘one of them race cars hit a truck and exploded and a driver’s tweeting it!’  Remember this was 4 years ago in 2012, athletes and celebrities using Twitter was still a bit of a novelty.

So back to the race, when the car struck the cleanup truck and caused the explosion, it also created a huge oil and gas leak as it ran out of the truck and down the track.  The stuff was so toxic there was fear that it would literally eat away the finish of the track and potentially cause the race to be postponed.  The solution?  NASCAR and Daytona officials hurry to the scene with a cleaner that would quickly save the day.

Boxes of Tide detergent.  That’s right, a national audience watched as Tide detergent got one of the best organic product placements since CBS focused in on the Nike logo on Tiger Woods’ putt as it fell into the hole during The Masters.  Even better, Fox NASCAR announcer Darryl Waltrip was calling the race and Tide was his main sponsor during his racing days.  So as the cleanup is being performed with simple Tide detergent, Darryl is doing what any good NASCAR driver does (even former ones) he was plugging his sponsor and singing the praises of Tide detergent.

It was the real-time content marketing opportunity of a lifetime for Tide, and it fell right in their laps.  Unfortunately, at the time Tide’s Twitter account was asleep and missed capitalizing on any of this.  Ironically, I quickly wrote up a blog post during the delay, published it, and the next morning ESPN interviewed me for a story they did on the race, and I got to discuss how Tide dropped the social media ball here.  So one brand’s loss was another blogger’s gain!

But last week, Kohl’s was a bit smarter. You’ve probably already seen the Happy Chewbacca video but just in case you did not (or want another good laugh):

Note at the start that Candace mentions buying the mask at Kohls. So when your brand gets a positive mention during one of the most popular videos in the history of the internet, what does your brand do? If it’s smart, it goes out of its way to reach the person behind that video and thank them for the kind mention. Kohls was smart enough to do just that, they drove to Candace’s house, gave her and her family loads of Star Wars toys (including Chewbacca masks for everyone in the family), and plenty of gift cards. Candace was clearly moved and thrilled by Kohls’ act.

The cynic will argue that Kohls is just trying to capitalize on the popularity of this video.  Of COURSE that’s what they are doing!  That’s what they SHOULD be doing, but the first thing they should do is communicate to Candace that they appreciate the fact that she shopped at Kohls, and mentioned them.  Think of how much money Kohls would have had to spend to get as much positive publicity as Candace gave the brand in 4 mins?  Millions.  So showing up at her doorstep with a few thousand dollars in merchandise and store credits is a very small price to pay for that publicity.  Plus, that act itself gets Kohls MORE positive publicity, as you see here.

The two most important words in social media are ‘Thank you’.  When a customer does something for you, you thank them.  Don’t overthink this social media stuff, y’all.

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Now I Get It: Three Tactics For Incorporating Learning Into Your Social Media Content and Training

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One of the most important traits of good content is that it helps teach its audience a core lesson.  Too many ‘experts’ focus their content on ‘let me tell you what I know’ when they should be focused on ‘let me teach you what you don’t know’.  When your only frame of reference is what works for you, then you can’t effectively teach others how to succeed.  The best teachers are the ones that can share a successful case study and then relate the core teachings to your business so that you can learn how to apply those lessons to your unique situation.

Over the last decade I’ve created content here, I’ve spoken at hundreds of events, I’ve given workshops and training sessions for companies, and even written a very successful business book.  These are three traits I’ve discovered for creating content that also facilitates learning for your audience:

1 – Case studies alone don’t teach anything. So many ‘teachers’ miss this, but if you are trying to teach a new concept to a group, probably the worst thing you can do is simply use one case study to illustrate the concept in action. What happens when you do this is your audience won’t learn the concept, they will learn the case study.  They will be able to explain what the company in the case study did, but since that’s their only reference to the concept in action, they won’t understand the concept itself.  Instead, you want to use a mix of case studies and hypothetical scenarios.  Instead of just explaining a case study of how Chick Fil-A used hashtags to reach moms, you want to also explain how a babyfood company and a small daycare could do the same thing.  By using both exact and abstract examples, the audience can more easily grasp the core concept that runs through all examples.

2 – This is what it looks like when you do it right, and this is what it looks like when you mess up. When I’m working at home, I will often turn on the tv just to have background noise so I can better focus on my work.  Sounds weird, but it works for me.  And I will typically have the PBS Create TV channel on, which has a mixture of cooking, travel and hobby-related programming.  One show they have is called Cook’s Country, it’s a cooking show that teaches you how to cook.  But one thing the staff does that I love is before they start showing you how to cook a particular dish, they will show you how it will look if you mess up.  And they will explain how you messed up.  If you cook it on too high of a temperature, it looks like this, if you use warm butter instead of chilled, it looks like this.  They address common errors that are made in cooking a dish at the start, and explain what you did wrong and how to avoid it.  Then as they cook the dish, they explain how they aren’t replicating that error, then the end result is a gorgeous dish and you have a complete understanding of how the dish should look if you do it correctly.  More importantly, you understand what you did wrong before, so you can correct your error in the future.

3 – You learn by doing. Building on both of the previous examples, you can also use scenarios to apply what you’ve learned.  Giving your audience examples of ‘this is what it looks like when it’s messed up’, and let them apply what they have learned to fix it. For example, in my content strategy and creation workshops, one of the exercises I have attendees do is I give them a ‘bad’ post headline, and ask them to re-write it, using the concepts I’ve taught them for writing a better headline.  This is especially true in an in-person setting, but if you just explain a concept without having the audience put that learning into action, they won’t grasp it as fully.  This is honestly where a lot of workshops fail attendees, they forget that a workshop isn’t a presentation with Q&A, it’s for learning via participation.  The attendees are supposed to be involved because you want them to apply what they have learned before they leave, so it helps cement the learning process for them.

 

When you are creating content, whether its writing a blog post or creating a white paper, give thought to how you are teaching and more importantly what you are teaching.  Don’t just write that case study because you think it will make your business or your agency look good, also teach your audience how they can get similar results for their business.  If you teach your audience a new skill that improves their own business efforts, you have created value for them, and that’s how you win their attention and create word of mouth (word of mouse?) for your business online.

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Great Marketing Is About Understanding People, Not Tools

About five years ago I talked to a District Attorney who spent a lot of time talking to high school students about the dangers of drug usage. It was a passion of his and it allowed him to gain a great understanding of how teenagers communicated with each other online.  He told me something (again, this was in 2011 or 2012) that surprised me.  He said “The kids I talk to have left Facebook and they’ve moved to Snapchat.” Now fast forward 5 years and it seems like within the last 6 months every marketer on the planet has suddenly ‘discovered’ Snapchat.  It’s the hot shiny social media tool of the moment, even though it’s been around for years.  The next Instagram, maybe even the next Facebook depending on who you talk to.

But let’s go back to that revelation from 5 years ago that ‘the kids have left Facebook’.  Why?  What caused these teenagers to shift their behavior away from Facebook and move to Snapchat?

In short, it’s because their parents were getting on Facebook. If you want to push teenagers and millenials off a social media site, then add either their parents, or marketers on the site.  And what was happening 5 years ago?

Marketers everywhere were telling us that we had to be on Facebook.  Now fast forward 5 years, and what are marketers telling us today?  That we have to be on Snapchat.

Marketers have never understood that it’s not about understanding the social media tools, it’s about understanding the people using the tools. The only way to understand the people using a tool is to be a part of the community of people that use that tool.  You have to interact with them directly to understand their motivation for being there.

Marketers typically don’t want to ‘waste their time’ with that, they just want to sell.

Surfing

You can only sell to someone that is ready to buy.  Seems like common sense, but too many companies market their products to potential customers that have no idea how those products fit into their lives.  It would be like marketing a surfboard to someone that has never surfed.

If a potential customer has no interest in a surfboard, then you don’t market the product (surfboard), you market how the product fits into the customer’s life (surfing).  Once you’ve sold the customer on surfing, then they are ready to buy a surfboard.

At that point, it makes sense to shift to product-specific marketing that focuses on the surfboard.  But if I have never surfed and have no idea why I would ever want to, selling me on why I need to buy your surfboard is a complete waste of time and money for you.

When you’re crafting your content strategy focus on these key points:

1 – It’s more important to understand your customer than it is social media tools. You don’t need to understand Snapchat, you need to understand IF and WHY your customers would use these tools.  That gives you insights into how you can use the same tools in a way that creates value for them, instead of distraction and irritation.

2 – If your goal is to leverage social media to build awareness for your business, then you want to create content focused on how your product and services connect with your customer.  Create content focused on surfing, not the surfboard.  Create content focused on safe driving, not your auto insurance policy.  Creating content focused on the connections between the customer and your products helps get their attention.

3 – If you know your customer is ready to buy your product, then you can create product-specific content, because that’s what they want and need at that point.  But if they aren’t ready to buy, then sell how you product fits into their lives, sell the product itself when they are ready to buy.

Sell me first on how your product makes my life better, then I’m ready to buy, and you can sell me your product.

Pic via Flickr user Kevin Cole

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Ten Elements Every Company Blog Should Have

Understanding the Ten Elements Every Company Blog Should Have

Social media sites come and go (Remember Google Plus and Friendfeed?), but a company blog remains one of the best tools available to drive organic traffic to your website. A company blog lets you promote your business, introduce yourself and your employees to the world, and gives you a place to provide valuable information to your customers.

Thinking about launching a company blog? Great, now if you want to avoid being “that guy,” then here’s the essential elements that you should incorporate into your blog.

1 – A strategy. Why are you blogging? What are you attempting to do with your blog? Establish your company as an industry leader? Boost your brand awareness? Provide customer service? Know what you want to accomplish with your blog, and make sure that your goals are consistent with your overall business strategy.  This post goes in-depth into creating a solid content strategy for your blog.  Once you’ve created your blogging strategy, make sure every member of your content team understands what that strategy is. Every content creator you work with will need to intimately understand your blogging strategy. It will make their jobs much easier, and they will create better content as a result.

2 – A dedicated group of bloggers. If you only have one blogger, or if you have five, every blogger needs to know what is expected of them, and what their role is. If each blogger needs to write 2 posts a week, they have to be willing to give you 2 posts a week.  Keep in mind when setting your team and expected goals, that it’s better to start with less and then grow as the skills and familiarity of the team improves. For example, it makes more sense to start with asking 3 new posts a month from each writer, then after a couple of months you may want to increase the rate for each writer up to 5 new posts a month. Starting small and growing makes more sense than taking on too much right out of the gate.

3 – A posting schedule. This ties in with #2. Ideally, a company blog should have at least 1 new post a week. Make sure each blogger knows how many posts a week/month they are responsible for, and have the posts up on a set pattern. Don’t have the bloggers put them up whenever inspiration strikes, that’s how you end up with 2 posts a week; one on Thursday night at 10:46pm, the other on Sunday at noon. Set up your posts to run in the middle of the week, and then move outward. Tues, Weds, and Thursday are usually the best days for traffic, so schedule posts to run these days, usually around 10am-noon.

Remember, it’s more important to keep to a set schedule, than it is to post more often. Creating and keeping a regular schedule trains readers to know when to expect new content from your blog. This helps drive engagement and traffic.

4 – A comment policy. Do you moderate? If so, how long does it take to approve comments. When Shelia leaves a comment at 3am Saturday morning, will it be noon on Monday till it’s approved? You need to know this. For extra credit, list it on the blog itself.  Keep in mind that you are under NO obligation to let stand ANY comment that personally attacks any of your writers or any of your writers. Challenging ideas presented is fine, but if any comment attacks or attempts to bully either a writer or reader, feel free to delete the comment without prejudice. Your house, your rules.  In fact, if you want to turn off comments entirely, that’s totally fine.

5 – An ‘About Us’ section. Tell me who you are, what you do, and how I can get in touch with you. It’s best to include an email address AND a phone number.  Yes, people still like to reach you via a phone call. For extra credit, add a section explaining what your blog is about.

6 – Pictures and bios for EVERY blogger. Again, this is non-negotiable. I need to be able to SEE who every blogger is, and I need to know their background. Simply seeing the face of the bloggers writing for your blog makes it much easier to trust and relate to the writers. Really.

7 – A clear Call to Action. You want to direct your readers to engage in some type of action.  Maybe you want them to download your new white paper, or signup for a product trial. Perhaps it’s simply asking them to call you, but you should have some type of Call to Action. Notice at the top right of this blog I have Calls to Action asking you to hire me to speak, or check out my LinkedIn profile, or read my recent posts. You need to give your readers an action to take.

8 – Ask for subscribers. Give your readers a way to subscribe to your blog, via a feed reader, or email. Feedburner can help you set up both, go to Feedburner.com and set yourself up a free account, if you haven’t already.

A small section explaining what RSS is and the advantages of subscribing would be a nice touch as well.  Also, if your company has a newsletter, you can promote it to subscribers as well.

9 – A section for Recent Comments. This isn’t a ‘must have’, but it’s a really nice way to put the focus on your readers, and it also gives them an idea of which posts are getting the most attention. If you aren’t really interested in getting comments on your posts then you could focus on something else like your most popular posts or promote your company website.

10 – A personal touch. Be human. Refer to commenters by name. Say ‘thank you’ early and often. Ask for feedback, and opinions. Remember that ultimately, people don’t want to connect with companies, we want to connect with people.

What did I miss? If your company blogs, what are some other elements that you believe are vital to your blogging efforts? Which of these are most important?