This article is the first in a follow up series on a popular article I wrote last week making the case for the need to market your blog’s content and how I believe the reason good blogs often go unread is do to poor marketing.
I called it a secret for added sensationalism, but also to SPECIFICALLY market it to people that are looking for some secret, some quick fix, some blog marketing trick , because this article may be contain the information they actually need without all the snake oil.
The most important aspect of blog marketing is crafting the message your blog as whole (the blog title, the individual post title, the graphics, the name, the READERS ASSUMPTIONS OF WHAT SHOULD BE THERE) tell a first time visitor, before they even read past the first line.
Marketing has many steps, but the most important is determining what message to pitch. What is your story, what do your blog title, your post title and your graphics all say together when someone sees them for the very first time??? What does your blog’s marketing say to it’s reader?
I’m going to give some very specific examples, but before I go into some real life and hypothetical examples I’m going to clarify something. I’m not just talking about making your blog look pretty; in fact, you can have a very successful blog that’s ugly or plain and still have beautiful marketing, but that look will have to play into your message, and different looks, different ideas, and different trust factors can add strength or kill your ability to market your blog. Enough exposé; let’s illustrate this with some hard examples.
In my previous article I made the claim that if all the blogs could all contain the same article, which one gets read, gets put on the social networks, and gets all the attention online would depend on which has better marketing.
Now I’ll give you a specific example of that in context to encapsulate the overall connection between post, blog, and what or message the reader will put together from the combination of the two. Note that all the examples involve generalization; however, I think you’ll understand exactly what I’m taking about with these hypothetical situations.
Take a personal blog with plain / limited graphics, a marketing companies blog with slick commercial graphic design and lots of features and a blog devoted solely to a super niche topic with very creative graphics all centered around topic X .
Keeping to my original claim, say all three of the above blogs post an article giving detailed advice on topic X. They use the post title “The ultimate guide to topic X.” Now we have three blogs, all with same article and the same title, which one gets read? Well, which one has the better overall message to a first time reader when you look at all the elements? I would say the niche blog, then the commercial blog, and last the personal blog. The niche topic blog has the strongest message for this type of post, why?
Because before they ever read the post, they’ve somehow clicked to find an ultimate guide to topic X and immediately they see that the blog is completely devoted to topic X, thus giving the message that “hey this author writes a lot about topic X, in fact they’ve devoted an entire blog just to the topic, they must really love it and know something about it, that’s seems like a good place to read an ultimate guide to topic X.”
This will result in more people reading it on a first time visit. It’s an entire blog on topic X, so it’s easy for other people to link to it and I’d expect it to do better on the social media sites as well; it makes sense to a reader almost immediately why a blog devoted solely to topic X would have a post called “the ultimate guide to topic X.”
Now let’s change the titles and articles just a tiny bit and check out the marketing messages one more time.
Let’s take title “why you should never buy product Y in Industry X.” Same article same title, all three blogs, which one gets read? The personal blog, then the niche blog? The personal blog’s message is that this is an individual blog; its not full of “marketing” hype, but rather strong or controversial opinion pieces that will probably be accepted as more genuine (as opposed to being there for link bait) and thus, easier to market. The commercial blog would have the least strong message, because people don’t trust a commercial blog to be honest with that type of a title, especially if product Y was a competitor. The niche blog would fair somewhere in the middle.
Other examples of articles titles I believe would favor the commercial blog: “what I’ve learned from 15 years in Industry X,” “The future of Industry X,” “10 industry z tips that will save you money (niche would work here as well),” “what’s costing you money in industry X,” “branding in Industry X, the race is on.” With a commercial blog anything where the fact that you’re a company would strengthen the trust factors instead of hurting them or any news / industry business related items are the best way to go.
Being a company with a professional reputation, among other things, well chosen blog content can add to your trustworthiness when giving something like business advice to your readers. Now this might not work as we in a personal or niche topic blog because people tend to be more trusting of business advice or financial advice when it comes from a company with a reputation.
I’ve used a lot of generalizations here and there are many examples both ways. They say you can’t judge a book by it’s cover, but people do every day, and people judge your blog by it’s “virtual” cover. People are judging your blog by by it’s title, by it’s name, it’s graphics, how the blog title relates to the post title, by the way everything on it comes together. They’re judging it’s marketing, What message does it tell the reader apart from the individual post. Get that right and the rest is a whole lot easier!!
