Blogging/content strategy
-
While personal blogging & branding is pretty typical for those in a service/b2b industry, when it comes to CEOs/owners of retail businesses - not so much.
We have a company blog right now that is heavy on company news and updates - and will be working towards being more informational/educational. But, in the meantime, it's difficult getting the ok to contribute to contributor based article/resource sites - such as http://smallbiztrends.com, since the business blog, by nature, is promotional. (our clients are both business & consumer)
Assuming, we can generate enough content, my suggestion is to have the owner create a personal blog which will be purely information and educational, and use that blog to account for the owner's expertise and use those articles as means to get accepted as a contributor at highly prized sites. At the same time, we would still have a business blog that combines educations & company news/promotional.
Does this seem like a sound strategy? or is it better to just build up the company blog as an educational resource. Will reputable sites be ok with an educational company blog?
-
The kind of content I'm talking about would go on the company blog, primarily, and the rest on quality publishers' sites within your theme via outreach.
-
I think Chris had some good suggestions. I would add the following comments. 1) I would encourage your CEO or a ghost writer to start doing blog entries. I would add this as a blog category. In this way it is not going to look bad or screw things up if he does not always get a blog out. Once your CEO has built up a few blog entries it might be good to add a list of prior blog entries next to his profile. This would be a good way for people to get a feel for how he thinks and what he believes in.
I do think it is a good idea to hire a ghost writer(I admit I am biased as that is one of the services my company provides). However I would strongly recommend that your CEO participate in the process and approve the final blog so that the blog has his voice.
Even though you did not ask about this I thought I would also mention that you might want to add a newsletter archive as a category as well. This is a good way to keep old newsletters as a reference for those that are interested and increase your content at the same time.
Ron
-
In my personal opinion you should drop the idea of a separate blog and work on your company’s blog and make it a one stop resource for people within your industry and for your customers. If owner’s branding is one of the important part for you then just go with author tag and author profile!
Stay active on social media profiles and communicate with your audience instead of giving them a feeling that your blog or website is a one way communication!
Adding another blog will just only increase your efforts and will not really offer you valuable returns.
Hope this helps!
-
In fact, I would suggest working on your company blog instead of creating a new one. Even though the content on your company blog may not yet be optimal as an education resource, I'm sure your company blog has a current following which you can count on. If people are already following your company updates, the likelihood of them being interested in information related to your industry is quite high.
Work on creating quality educational posts that would be relevant to your target audience, alongside with your company updates. This would keep existing followers coming back for a fresh set of content, and attract potential customers through the educational posts.
Creating a new blog in this situation wouldn't benefit much. You would end up trying to optimise the new blog for SEO and having to attract the same group of people again, which I believe you already have in the company blog.
-
Thanks.. so, you support the idea of having a blog separate from the company blog? Or, can it be part of the current company blog?
-
If the owner isn't already actively blogging and been doing so for some time (meaning that he likes doing it, is accustomed to taking the time to do it, and is likely to continue doing it for a good deal of time into the future), hire a writer/ghost writer, instead. Map out an editorial calendar based on the kinds of content that will be acceptable to the highest quality sites you're able to get articles published on have the owner add a bunch of expert bullet points under each article topic and have the writer go at it. This way, your effort will be much more sustainable.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Hosted content vs Dedicated website (for large piece of content)
There is one question that keep bugging us and for which we are looking for a logical answer – to put it short, in which context(s) is it preferable to publish original content on a company website vs on a dedicated external platform with its own URL? To give a little more details: we an education company that provides languages course abroad and that functions like a specialised travel agency. Each trip is very specific – it depends on people's language level, objectives, budget, etc. – so we provide tailor-made advice for each of our students. Our site is not an e-commerce site, and a typical call-to-action is a request for a 1-to-1 interview with one of our agents, or a quote request for a language trip project. The top conversion for us is an enrolment for a language course abroad. We have a corporate websites structure where we have 1 website per locale where we operate, which means 14 websites in 7 different languages. We produce smaller pieces of content for these websites in a dedicated section – the rest of the website being mostly a presentation of our products, services and destinations – but here we intend to create a very large Quiz which will be based on multiple audio files. The content will be translated into multiple languages (likely 10 different languages) and will require some rather heavy development. We intend to add sections for scoreboards, stats, a log-in section (probably Facebook), etc. This sounds to us like something we should host on a specific URL, but then how can we make the most of the SEO benefits that we will (hopefully) get with such content? We plan to have an about section where we explain a little bit who we are, where we will probably link back to our corporate websites, but of course we want our project to live for itself and to be as far from commercial as possible – while still making the most of the SEO benefits. How can we do this in the most subtle / logical way? Would it be better to host our Quiz on our corporate domains? Thanks in advance for your advice. Maëlle
Branding | | ESL_Education0 -
Do you think its ethical to use your personal google authorship for outsourced content?
I routinely outsource nicely written content but never use my google authorship for those articles. Should I be adding my google authorship to those articles? Or would that be unethical and violate googles TOS?
Branding | | TShak0 -
Our content has been stolen
We've a new intern who spent a good few hours writing this article http://appointedd.com/blog/nominees-for-the-british-hairdresser-of-the-year-2013-announced/ - quite a good we one feel. Our main competitor has taken almost the entire thing word for word and put in up on their blog http://www.inaa.com/apiblog/?p=821 While this is a foolish move on their part, we're still quite offended over the incident as this was the intern's forst article and she'll be looking to add it to her portfolio. I was wondering what the best practice is in this situation? Is simply writing to them enough if they've demonstrated they're underhanded? Should we call them out on it? I'm simply unsure as I want to protect no only the business but the intern also. thanks!
Branding | | LeahHutcheon0 -
Guest blogging & duplicate content
This feels like a question I should know the answer to and I'm a tad embarrassed to ask, but the part of my brain that gets tripped up by somewhat simple things sometimes, is begging to ask just to confirm my understanding. I want to make sure I have it right it prior to giving advice. When one guest blogs I assume that it is critical to create content that is original and unique to that one instance of the guest blog. That means, do not also put that post on your own blog and do not submit it to any other blogs for inclusion. This is both for duplicate content issues and also to respect and not put in jeopardy for duplicated content, the blog owner you are guesting for. Is this correct? Are there any scenarios in which there might be a deviation of this "rule"? Like some use of canonicals or anything else?
Branding | | gfiedel0 -
Competitors' dummy websites --- What SEO (or other?) strategy is this?
I work for an e-retailer. I've noticed that at least one of our competitors (and, I think, a second as well) has set up a neutral "third party" website that attempts to provide unbiassed information about different manufacturer's products. Of course, their products always win out over the competitor in these comparisons. But this one site (and another whose corporate backer I can't seem to figure out) is keyworded so poorly, and not branded at all. There are very few (if any) links to the corporate sponsor, or links, period. It's definitely not serving to have "Little Brand x" appear next to "Big Brand Y" in search results, either (again, really poorly keyworded). Other SEO seems really minimal. What do you think their strategy is? Is it a dumb waste o' money or something really smart that I'm not picking up on? Your insights most appreciated!
Branding | | Novos_Jay1 -
Unique Content around GEO targets
Is there a way to produce SEO, google friendly Unique Content to ad to long tail pages, that will provide user value? Emample: 1800medigap.com we want to rank for keywords that are geo specific: Medicare Supplemant Insurance Balitmore Maryland Denver Colorado Medigap Insurance ......
Branding | | jdcline0 -
Facebook, Google Plus - What to share/like?
Hi everybody! We are planning to offer an incentive to all our customers who interact with us on social media websites. What's the most important thing to ask from a customer? Facebook to like our Facebook business page or to like our own website through Facebook? to just follow us on Facebook or to actually comment / interact on our wall? Google + to +1, share, add to circle our Google+ business webpage or to +1 or share our own website? So basically what do we need to promote most? Our Facebook / Google+ business pages or our own website through social media marketing? While we understand it's important to actually interact with the customers and offer value on social media websites, we are looking to boost our SEO efforts. Thank you!
Branding | | echo10 -
What are the best Guest Blogging websites? services?
Does anyone know of any guest blogging websites that offer a good (white hat) service? We're looking for websites that website owners may subscribe to that actually are pursuing guest bloggers to post on their site. We're looking for white-hat only websites. Thanks,
Branding | | iAnalyst.com0