Issue No. 2 / December 2016
What I’ve Learned from 2 Years of Business Blogging
Why Blogging is Essential to Your Business
By Creative Revolution
Seven Successful Business Blogs (And Why We Love Them)
THIS MONTH’S FEATURE
Seven Simple Steps to Writing A Successful Busines Blog Post
6 Lessons We Can Learn From A Piss-Taking Mummy Blogger When Blogging For Business
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Insights Issue One
Editorial
Disclaimer and Copyright
ChĂŠ Stevenson
Insights is wholly owned by Creative
Colophon
Revolution, and is protected by Australian copyright and intellectual property laws. Contributing Writers
All work produced in Insights is subject
Alisha Conlin-Hurd
to copyright and remains property of the
Tyla Feltwell
respective creators and owners. All written
ChĂŠ Stevenson
context expressed within Insights is not necessarily the views or opinions of the publisher.
Design & Cover Norman Barnett
Publisher Creative Revolution
Contact Details 5444 0030 2/586 Hargreaves St Bendigo, Victoria 3550 digital@creativerevolution.com.au www.creativerevolution.com.au
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Contents
Contents
04
EDITORIAL
What I’ve Learned from 2 Years of Business Blogging 10
ARTICLE
Why Blogging is Essential to Your Business 14
22
ARTICLE
Seven Successful Business Blogs (And Why We Love Them) FEATURE
Seven Simple Steps to Writing A Successful Business Blog Post 32
CASE STUDY
Six Lessons We Can Learn From Piss-Taking Mummy Blogger When Blogging For Business
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Insights Issue Two
EDITORIAL PIECE BY CHÉ STEVENSON
What I’ve Learned from 2 Years of Business Blogging
W
e published our first blog
in March of 2014. Two years, 8 months, and 35 blogs later: what have I learned about blogging for business? Our very first blog was ‘Three Cs of Content Marketing’, we were pretty happy with it: people gave us good feedback, it was relevant to our business, it had a nice graphic, and useful content. As you might imagine, there’s a bit more to blogging than ‘nice’ content! There’s timing, frequency, relevance, length, structure, flow, seeding, engagement – the list goes on. But I’m not here to do a 101 in blogging – there are countless articles covering the ins-and-outs of blogging for business. Instead I’m going to share some specific experiences and insights from our journey over the last 32 months...
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Editorial
Have a Vision
Quality over Quantity,
Update it
Ideally Both!
We started with a very specific vision for our blog: share
When we started our blog we were quite consistent, with
marketing insights using simple single-point infographics
eight blogs in five months. That’s less than the textbook
with text that expands on the idea.
minimum of one per week, but we maintained roughly fortnightly blogs for that period.
This idea was good, and it worked well for a while. But it was very time-consuming to generate the infographics for
As we got busier in the business, it became harder to
every article, and over time we wanted to cover content
maintain the consistency, and we eventually dropped right
that wasn’t applicable to this structure (how does that
off – I’m ashamed to admit we didn’t publish a blog for a
work with a news article about winning an award?).
full 10 months!
After a while we started writing articles that didn’t fit the
Our first blog back, in June 2015, was a doozy: ‘Cut-Price
original concept, but we didn’t update the branding and
Chic: Six Strategies That Made K-Mart Cool’ – to this day
vision. This lead to articles that weren’t very different to
a full quarter of our website traffic is directly to this blog!
everything else out there. We were committed to righting our wrongs and maintaining We have now rebranded our blog from ‘Marketing
volume and consistency, with four blogs per month. And
Illustrated’ to ‘Marketing Insights’ and we focus on
we did that, for a while. The problem was that in the rush
marketing insights with a strong point of view. Our blog is
to meet the quota the quality sometimes suffered. We
now centred on our monthly digital magazine, ‘Insights’.
produced some uninspired, run-of-the-mill articles like ‘The Secret to Your First 1000 Social Media Followers’.
The Lesson We weren’t seeing great results despite the additional In the rush to create content you might stray from your
effort, and once again we got busy and blogging went on
original vision. Your vision will need to be updated in order
the backburner. This time it was only a three-month hiatus.
to stay relevant to your business. Now we are back at maintaining the volume of content, but we are acutely aware that there is no point writing an article if it doesn’t have anything genuine to offer. The Lesson The most important thing is quality of content – articles with a voice and something to say that your audience will want to hear. But greatness awaits those who can achieve quality and quantity at the same time!
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Editorial
Unfocused Content can Lead to Unfocused Traffic Early on in our blog, I wrote them all myself. And I wrote blogs on whatever I felt interested in. While keeping vaguely marketing-oriented, I produced some kinda weird content like ‘Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick Two!’, ‘Good Enough is Never Good Enough’, and ‘7 Factors that Promote Intrinsic Motivation’. The fascinating thing is that we hit blogging paydirt with and ‘7 Factors that Promote Intrinsic Motivation’ – we now rank on searches for Intrinsic Motivation and generate around 20% of our monthly traffic from this blog. The problem? None of these visitors are our target audience. The term ‘Intrinsic Motivation’ is commonly used in the education industry: they are not looking for digital marketing services! Successful content and traffic volumes have a broad benefit to your overall site performance, subtly boosting SEO site-wide. But really we want to rank on Google and attract visitors from within our target market.
Tap into
The Lesson
the Zeitgeist
Never forget whom your target audience is and what SEO keywords you want to rank for – or you could end up with
Our most successful blog of all time is ‘Cut-Price Chic: Six
hundreds of teachers visiting your site every month!
Strategies That Made K-Mart Cool’. It was our first blog back after a 10-month break, and we really hit the nail on the head with this one! I was fascinated with the transformation of K-Mart from a daggy Big-W clone to a trendy ‘cheap chic’ store. But there was nothing online about that from a marketing point of view. I wanted to know what business strategies and marketing choices got them there. The result was an article that tapped into the phenomenal success of K-Mart with a unique point of view on the topic. The Lesson Try to find a unique angle on a trending topic, and relate it back to your business and your target keywords.
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Editorial
People Love to Read
You’ll Learn
Human Stories
Your Own Lessons
More recently we have started including an editorial blog
We’re all on a business journey. With every decision and
every month. For us, an editorial is a blog written directly
every action we forge a path forward.
by me, from a personal perspective, and with a story or experience at the core.
If you include blogging as part of your marketing mix (and we strongly recommend {insert link to relevant blogging
The first couple of these blogs have done really well.
article} you do!), then you’ll have your own experiences –
‘Why I Started a Digital Marketing Agency’ received our
good and bad – and learn your own lessons.
highest ever level of social media likes and shares, with an average read time of seven and a half minutes. And ‘Why
Have you got any insights into blogging for business? What
Is Bendigo a Web Design Backwater?’ provoked a great
are your experiences? Share your story in the comments
response with lots of social media comments and shares.
below.
In fact this blog is one of these ‘Editorials’. Here I’m relating my personal experiences through the ups and downs of trying to build a business blog over the last two years. It’s blogging tips framed as a human story. The Lesson There is an innate human interest in hearing and sharing stories. You can tap into this by making our content human and personal.
Creative Revolution, Winner 2016 Excellence in Strategy for Online Presence in Bendigo
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Article
The Reasons Why and How Blogging is Essential to Your Business Trends come and go but blogging is here to stay, as more and more businesses embrace this exciting (but not-so-new) medium: transforming the way they communicate with their customers and raise awareness of their brand. We explore several reasons why every business needs their own blog, with some advice on how to set up and get started.
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Article
Why do you need a blog? 1. It Connects You With Your Customers
4. It Establishes Your Business as an Authority
Blogging creates a direct connection with your
Blogging establishes your business as an authority in
customers. Rather than talking at your target audience
your industry, and people will look to you as leaders
like traditional marketing does, blogging opens up a warm
- enhancing your reputation and increasing brand
and engaging dialogue between equals. As you develop
awareness. It can also lead to other professional
these relationships they also spill over to your social
speaking or writing engagements, cementing your
media, encouraging a lively two-way conversation. The
position as the experts in your field. The media might
power of blogging to “humanise” your business cannot
also approach you for comment when
be underestimated.
news breaks in your industry.
2. It Promotes Your Business Without the Hard-sell Blogging allows you to enthuse about your business without the hard sell. It creates a platform for you to share your passion for what you do, and the reasons why you are doing it. People are drawn to honest storytelling, and if you are able to craft interesting and useful content you will hold the attention of an audience that is keen to learn more – without the pressure of a sales pitch. 3. It Helps You Find New Clients (or They Find You) In addition to creating dialogue and developing relationships, there’s the boring but important tech stuff like SEO (search engine optimisation), increased traffic and converted leads. The bottom line is that blogging will direct more eyeballs to your website, and those eyeballs are attached to potential customers. In short – blogging helps people find you amidst all the noise, and that’s half the battle won.
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Article
“ It might seem overwhelming at first, but all you need to do is make one simple decision before you can jump in and get started. You have two choices: 1) a free blogging platform or 2) a selfhosted blog on your existing website. Both have their pros and cons, so it’s a matter of working out what suits you best. ”
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Article
How to Start a Blog? 1. Use a Free Online Platform to Set Up a Blog
2. Add a Blog To Your Existing Website
There are several free blogging platforms that will
Most businesses tend to prefer having a blog on their existing website, which
have you set up and blogging in minutes. The obvious
is quick and simple to achieve. Having your own self-hosted blog creates
advantage is that they are free to operate, so anyone
a seamless connection between your business website and your blogging
can have a blog - even if the budget isn’t there. They are
content, and is fantastic from a SEO perspective because all that juicy
fast to build and specifically designed for the layperson,
keyword-rich content is indexed under the same domain.
so you don’t need skills in web design or HTML. It is as simple as choosing a platform and picking a template
The other primary benefit of self-hosting is that you have free reign to
that appeals.
customise your website to your heart’s content, in order to make the interface for your customers as easy to navigate and aesthetically appealing as
There are some downsides, and the first is that templates
possible. Other than hosting costs, there aren’t really any downsides to adding
limit your design options. Nor are they good for SEO,
a blog to your existing business website.
because all content is indexed to the blogging platform, not your business. And thirdly – you don’t have your own
Whichever platform you choose, blogging adds that extra “something special”
URL. Rather than directing customers to
to your business. The beauty of this medium is that you can mix it up: your
www.YourBusiness.com, your web address is
posts can be funny, entertaining, informative, thoughtful or newsworthy, and
www.YourBusiness.blogspot.com, which makes it harder
you’re only limited by your imagination. So, what are you waiting for? It’s time
for people to find you.
to join the conversation.
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ARTICLE PIECE
If there is a formula behind great blogs – and we’re not sure there is - then these businesses have successfully nailed it. The interesting thing we found is that many of these are written by small businesses, which goes to show that you don’t need squillions of dollars in your marketing budget to create a great blog that connects with people. Narrowing our selection down to ten was hard, but here are our current favourites.
Article
1.
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Article
Kate Toon
Why we love it: When you’re a copywriter the pressure is really on to make your own blog sing. And the verdict
URL:
here? Kate Toon is the Adele of copywriters. A brief look
www.katetooncopywriter.com.au/
through some of her most recent posts is like taking
blog
a masterclass in “How To Write Headlines That Make People Want to Click Through”, and her writing style is
Industry: Copywriting and SEO
a winning combination of warm, witty and wise. We love this blog because it manages to educate about otherwise dry topics like SEO and copywriting while being fun and wildly entertaining. No surprise that her posts get a lot of enagement and are widely shared.
2.
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Article
Flying Solo
Why we love it: Flying Solo is an online community for small and micro businesses in Australia, and their
URL:
blog is chock-full of awesome content on topics
www.flyingsolo.com.au
like marketing, productivity, wellbeing, money and technology. They post daily and share articles from a
Industry: Small Business
wide range of bloggers and industry players, so there is always variety of interesting headlines to choose from. Flying Solo have nailed their target market and the site has a vibrant community of over 96 000 members - this is reflected in the healthy enagement. We love this blog because it takes a holistic approach to business, and the people running them.
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3.
The Spoilt Stylist
Article
Why we love it: The Spoilt Stylist is the blog of West Australian hair boutique, the Spoilt Hair Retreat, and it’s
URL:
hilarious. Most beauty blogs are serious to the point of
www.thespoiltstylist.com/blog
earnestness, but Elsa (yes, like the Frozen character) has injected a quirky sense of humour into the proceedings.
Industry: Health and Beauty
Titles like “Pregnancy Turned Me Ginger” and “Dear Dyson, It’s About Your Silent Hair Dryer” hint as to what you can expect, but it was a post called “What Happened When I Started Blogging For My Business” that really caught our attention. Spoiler alert: Google fell in love with her and profits increased by 40%.
4.
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Article
Talk About Creative
Why we love it: Talk About Creative is passionate about all things marketing, and their cheeky tagline
URL:
announces their team as “Professional Attention
www.talkaboutcreative.com.au/blog
Seekers”. One of the reasons we love their blog because it seeks to solve the mystery of the different
Industry: Digital Marketing
social media platforms and how they all operate, allowing business owners to walk away from their blog with clever, actionable tips to use. Their blog also covers related industry topics like branding, marketing copywriting and SEO – always with a sense of fun and a wicked sense of humour.
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5.
Finlee and Me
Article
Why we love it: If it wasn’t for the sidebar you wouldn’t even know that Finlee and Me was an online children’s
URL:
boutique. Their blog is effective because it focuses
www.finleeandme.com.au/blog
less on hard-selling its products and more on offering a wide range of informative and entertaining articles
Industry: Baby and Children’s
about parenting. Product reviews are peppered in
Products
between useful content like “5 Gentle Ways to Respond to a Tantrum” and opinion pieces about motherhood, so it never feels like you are being “sold to”. This is a great example of a business blog expanding its reach by offering useful content that is not specifically related to selling products.
6.
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Article
Adriano Zumbo
Why we love it: Why do we love Adriano Zumbo’s blog? One word: zonuts. Half crossaint, half donut, the zonut
URL:
is just one of the culinary delights to be found on this
www.zumbo.com.au/blog
swoonworthy blog. Food is such a feast for the senses that it can be hard to reduce that experience to written
Industry: Food
and visual content alone, but the photography on this blog is truly exceptional and does justice to the amazing sweet treats that Zumbo creates, which are more like art than food. It’s fairly new – only having started this year – but we are already hanging out for more.
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7.
Swish Design
Article
Why we love it: Kelly Exeter is a productivity genius. Her actual CV includes things like web designer, blogger,
URL:
podcaster and author but it’s her current blog series
www.swishdesign.com.au/blog
about simple shortcuts to business succcess that really have us excited. Lovers of life hacks will find much to love
Industry: Graphic and Digital Design
here, as the blog offers a wealth of tips and advice on how to work smarter, not harder. We’re not sure how she does it but she is an incredibly prolific poster, and there is always a wealth of fascinating and useful content relating to web design, workflow and digital marketing.
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Feature
Seven Sim Steps to W a Successf Business B
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Feature
mple Writing ful Blog Post
Ever wondered how to create a blog? Well wonder no more, because we’ve put together a handy step-by-step guide to writing a blog and publishing it. From thinking about your target audience to choosing images and editing, we will walk you through the process of writing a business blog post from scratch.
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Feature
Think About Who You Are Writing To The most important thing you can do before you start typing is be very clear about the audience you are writing to. This will inform the tone you choose to write in, the length of the article and the nature of content you wish to share. Given that this is a business blog you’ll need to think about your target customer; visualise that person and craft your posts to suit their tastes and interests.
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Feature
Start With A Topic & A Working Title Choosing a topic can be difficult: sometimes the ideas
TIP: Keep a master list of blog post ideas or potential
aren’t flowing and other times they are flowing far too
headlines in a physical notebook or a digital one. Add to
furiously and you end up in creative overwhelm. Try not to
the list whenever inspiration strikes, so you always have
be too ambitious with your blog posts, and don’t squeeze
a stockpile of ideas on hand.
too much into one article. If the topic is sprawling you can always break it up into a series of posts. Don’t worry about the headline just yet – jot down a working title and start typing.
There is an endless list of topics you could cover on your blog – as long as it relates to your business.
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Feature
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Write Your Draft Post a) Structure A general rule is that posts tend to hit the sweet spot
Blog posts need to have an introduction, a main body and
at 300 -500 words, or between 1000 – 1200 words
a conclusion. The most important part of your post will
for longer pieces. You might need to play around with
be the introduction, as you need to capture and keep the
different lengths to determine what works better with your
attention of your readers within a very short space of time.
audience. Try not to get too hung up on the “right” length,
Open with a few catchy sentences designed to grab their
because well-written content will hold your readers’
interest and give them a heads-up as to what they can
attention regardless.
expect to achieve from reading your post. TIP: Read your blog posts out loud once you have written
TIP: Long, vague or meandering introductions can lead
them. This gives you a good feel for their rhythm and
people to lose interest and click out of your blog post. Your
duration, and can reveal areas of repetition or stagnation.
opening needs to be clear, concise and catchy. Use the body of your blog post to get into the meat of
c) Call To Action
your content, making sure to include your most important points towards the beginning of the article (reader fatigue
Blog posts are a two-way dialogue with readers, and are
is a real thing, and our attention spans are more fickle
designed to end with a call to action that asks the reader
when reading on screens). Your conclusion should leave
to respond or act in some way. Think about what action
the reader with a brief reiteration of the main points, and
you want the reader to take next, and make sure this is
is never used to introduce new ideas.
clear at the end of your post.
TIP: The best blog posts are scannable, so people can
Do you want them to leave a comment on your post? Are
read quickly through the main points. Clear subtitles,
you posing a question that you want them to answer in
bullet points and short paragraphs are important when
order to join the conversation? Do you want them to
structuring your posts.
contact you, or download further information? Make sure you have an unambiguous call to action at the end of your
b) Length
post.
How long should your blog post be? There are a couple
TIP: Posing a direct question at the end of your blog is an
of schools of thought on this, and the “right” length will
open invitation for readers to join the conversation, and
depend on your subject matter and audience. Are they
can encourage their feedback or commentary.
highly educated but time-poor? Do they like long-form blog posts with lots of detail? Are they open to a bit of storytelling or do they prefer information to be brief and straight to the point?
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Feature
Brainstorm Multiple Headings Never underestimate the importance of headings. I’m
TIP: Good headlines are clear, punchy and descriptive -
going out a limb to say that the headline is the single most
don’t try to be too clever or mysterious or vague. And never
important component of your blog, because it can make
promise something in the headline that you aren’t going to
or break it. You may have written the greatest post in the
deliver. It’s called clickbait, and people hate it.
world, but if the headline is rubbish and no one clicks through it’s going to be a total dud because no one will ever read it. It’s creative grunt work, but brainstorming different headings is the way to pick a winner.
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Feature
Choosing Interesting Images Blog posts are a visual as well as a written medium, and
TIP: Be careful not to use copyrighted images. If you
adding images to your posts helps break up your text in
don’t have your own photos there are a number of free
order to refresh the eye and avoid reader fatigue. A well
sites online (Pixabay, for example) that offer free stock
chosen image can enhance the message of your blog
photography downloads.
post, and will display as a feature image if you choose to share your post on social media.
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Feature
Finishing Touches Before you hit publish it’s time to take stock and make a few finishing touches: a) Editing – people baulk at the thought of editing but it’s really important to polish your posts before you hit publish. b) Keywords – read through your post and find places
where you can add any relevant keywords. This will optimise your post for SEO. c) Appearance – time to preview your post and make sure that all images are in the right place, and that
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everything is formatted correctly.
Publish & Link To Social Media
And now for the fun part! Once you are finally happy with your post, it’s time to hit publish and push it out to your socials. Linking on Facebook or other social media will get your post out to your target audience, and if it strikes a chord with people they will also share it with their own social networks. TIP: Social media can be time consuming and disruptive. There are many options for scheduling your social media posts, and instead of posting daily you can sit down once a week to schedule seven days worth of content in one go. Follow these seven simple steps and you will end up blogging successfully for your business. The trick is to let your natural voice shine through, while using the timetested structure and format of posts that will make your communications clear and effective.
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Feature
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Interview
INTERVIEW WITH MEL SORINI, BY TYLA FELTWELL
6 Lessons We Can Learn From A Piss-Taking Mummy Blogger When Blogging For Business
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Interview
S he may be a self-proclaimed ‘piss-taking mummy
blogger’ by title, but Mel Sorini challenges the norm to create engaging lifestyle blogs that will literally make you laugh out loud. I know what you’re thinking, what does this have to do with blogging for business? Well, her work has been republished by the likes of Mamamia and the Huffington Post so it’s safe to say this blogger knows what’s up. Pay attention, because there is a lot we can learn from Mel when putting pen to paper for our own business. Where It All Began Mel’s blogging journey started when she found herself at home with her two young children and thought it was time to shed some insight on the lighter side of parenting. This led to the birth of Hugzilla. What started as a hobby, lead to much more after one of Mel’s blogs about the Thermomix was republished by Mamamia. It. Went. Viral. From this, she found herself doing radio and podcast interviews, and was even approached by other news sites and editors for paid work. Today ‘Hugzilla’ is renowned for being straightto-the-point, honest and chronically sarcastic. So, although this type of success may seem a little out of reach for those of us starting out, we sat down with Mel to get her tips on how you can get your business blog off the ground.
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Interview
1. Just Get Started Okay, let me guess, you have thought about blogging for your business for a while now, you know it’s important, but you just haven’t done it. Start. Now.
“Throw the rule book out and don’t overthink it. Set up a blog, write a post, hit publish (eeek scary) and share it with your social networks. And don’t get discouraged if you are only writing to an audience of one – it’s how we all start out.”
2. Be Different As we all know, the Internet is overflowing with content. So if you want to be noticed in this crowded space of ours, you’ve got to think outside the box. Give a different opinion to a commonly discussed topic in your industry or simply show the human element of your business.
“Being unique – whilst also being genuine – is the best thing you can give to your readers.”
3. Keep An Open Mind Be in tune to what is happening within your industry and the world around you, inspiration for your blogs can literally come from anywhere. Chances are you’ll come up with ideas when you aren’t even looking for them – write them down!
“I have a draft folder of half formulated ideas that I can draw on because often I get struck by random things as I’m going about my daily life; anecdotes from awkward encounters, observations I have made or reading something online.”
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Interview
4. Get To The Point One of the biggest mistakes people make when writing a blog is trying to be too elusive in the headline. Straight up, this just doesn’t work. People are time poor, they want to know exactly what they’re going to get from clicking on your blog. Develop a headline that is engaging and informative.
“When people are scrolling through crowded newsfeeds you need to cut through with clear and compelling headlines. You also have to promise something and you need to deliver on that promise early on or people will click straight out.”
5. Consistency is Key
6. Edit, Edit, Edit! It’s an old saying, your first idea isn’t always your best idea. The same goes for blogging. Get your idea down when inspiration strikes but the majority of your time should be spent moulding that idea to get it exactly right.
“People are surprised when I tell them I spend 80% of my time editing, because my posts seem very off-the cuff. One of the biggest mistakes people make is underestimating the importance of editing. Your first draft is never the best.”
People crave familiarity. Create a schedule and stick to it.
So there you have it, don’t overcomplicate things. Whip
If you plan on posting a blog once a week, pick a day and
out your laptop and get writing! And hey, Mel is living proof
work to it. This doesn’t mean you have to write the blog at
that you never know where your blog could take you.
the same time, let your inspiration drive that, but aim to publish your blog consistently.
To check out Mel’s blog head to www.hugzilla.com.au We’re big fans here.
“Building consistency into your publishing schedule helps develop an audience because readers know when to expect your posts – and will even nag you if you miss a deadline.”
For general or project enquries, please don’t hesitate to contact us on: 5444 0030 digital@creativerevolution.com.au www.creativerevolution.com.au 2/586 Hargreaves St Bendigo, Victoria 3550