The Blog Blog!

Now that you’ve begun work on your 2013 marketing calendar, it’s time to start fine tuning the smaller ingredients of your overall marketing plan, such as your blog strategy.

First off, writing a blog isn’t for every company. Make sure that putting out a blog fits in with the overall goals and standards of your brand. Also, if you have enough on your plate as it is, you may way to hold off on starting another project that requires a significant amount of time and effort. But if you feel like a blog would benefit your existing customers and help bring in new ones, then what are you waiting for?

Consider these 5 simple steps in developing a blog strategy for 2013:

1.       (If you haven’t already) Choose a hosting site.

Here at 123Print, we use WordPress, but there are many great blog hosting sites out there such as Live Journal, Blogger and Tumblr to name a few.

2.       Define your long-term goals for your blog.

In order to stay focused, it’s important to set goals and work toward them. Establish goals for the year, and track statistics such as page views and unique visitors on a daily basis. Analytics sites such as Google Analytics can help you track these numbers, and can be easily set up by your IT person (which may be YOU), or a tech-savy friend. (If it’s you, and you need some advice, Google may be able to help.) This will also allow you to see which posts drove in a lot of traffic and which posts drove in little-to-no traffic, giving you a better sense of what your readers are interested in.

3.       Set up a blog calendar.

Take a look at your overall marketing calendar to get an idea of which promotions, themes or product launches will be going on during which months, and time your posts to go along with them. For example, throughout October and November, many companies are promoting for the holidays, so think of some good holiday tips and tricks blogs to write during those months. And know that your blog calendar is not set in stone and can always be changed to adjust for changes in the marketing calendar and what’s generally going on in the world.

4.       Promote your blog posts.

Especially in the early stages of developing a blog, simply publishing a blog on your host site won’t automatically draw readers. Take advantage of cross-channel promotion by posting quirky and interesting teasers that link to your blog post on your other social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linkedin and even Pinterest! You can also include links in your emails or newsletters.

5.       Keep overt self-promotion to a minimum.

Focus your posts on useful information that your readers will find interesting and worthy enough to share with their friends – no one wants to read a blog post filled to the rim with self-promotional messages. Instead, creatively use your products to show examples of what you’re focusing on in your blog, such as using one of your postcards to exemplify a way for businesses to promote their Black Friday sales.

Does your brand have a blog? Leave us a link in the comments below.