Blogs.
As an Internet strategist - my life daily is
consumed with social media feeds, blog alerts, feedburner stats, google
alert updates, monitoring, strategizing, execution - all of these
overused terms and time consuming tactics certainly take a toll on you.
But one thing I do often, as I do for all my
clients, is research - taking notice of the growing digital space
around me - thinking of ideas to implement innovative strategies among
the community and with my clients.
One of those key strategies that are a must in
today’s Internet spectrum is a blog. A
blog is key in driving not only traffic, but interest to your brand,
product, or company. Blogs help you appear authoritative in your
industry - allowing you to give views on the latest events in your
trade, offer reviews, insights, and so on.
This expands into relationship building tools, as
you are able to speak more freely and in a more informal and personable
style, as compared to how you direct the voice on your main website.
Through the blog channel, they are more likely to trust you, and then
all the more likely to visit your main website and then click your
links and possibly purchase your product.
It also offers insight for your customers, and
allows them to leave comments and ’speak’ to you on a key level. In
addition, blogs are extremely search engine friendly - through
thousands of possible keywords and fresh, updated content on a regular
basis - blogs are simply great facets to have on your website today.
Your simply misguided if you think otherwise.
*Read More for a detailed blog breakdown
of the popular clothing line Free
People.
Now, another aspect of blogs I enjoy are creating
them, not only content strategy, but programming and designing them on
a unique level. One aspect of ‘branding’ a blog is considering the
number of possibilities you have when actually build the blog.
- How do you want to approach a design?
- Are you a creative or less scalable brand?
- Do you have the ‘assets’ to build a ‘creative’
blog?
- Do you have a content strategy built before you
blog?
- Do you know how to ‘market’ your blog on a
daily basis?
These are all important questions you MUST
think about before diving into the blog space - thinking you know what
to do, when you might need a refresher.
And always remember that blogs vary, depending if
you are in the business-to-consumer or business-to-business parallel -
but your Plan of Action (POA) should always remain the same.
Case Study.
Free
People. A blog that does it Right.
Free People is a ’boutique’ style of women’s and
young girl’s clothing - offered both online and in brick and mortar
stores around the world. It is a sister-brand to another well-known
bohemian-type clothing, accessories and furniture store - Anthropologie.
Now, the Free People store design is a very
creative, bohemian look that stylizes the brand well, and does many
good things as far as marketing the brand on the main website - but
their blog page does an even better job in terms of look, strategy and
content.
First, when you come upon the page - you have a
nice flash banner on the top portion of the blog that draws instant
attention. It’s 3-D style and moving parts, keeps the user engaged
enough to move the mouse over the falling curtain rod and press it -
which then drags the screen over, as if you were in puppet show -
making note of their blog’s name “Caravan of Curiosities”
- to keep the user engaged enough to follow through the blog to
discover its true meaning.
Another side point here - naming your blog
something different and marketing that along side your main brand is a
nice change of pace on occasion. But it won’t work for everyone - so
carefully think about that before you go off and name your blog
something completely different. The nice touch here is that ‘Caravan of
Curiosities’ still has an engaging tone to it, and how they display it
in the blog is effective as well.
Working your way down the page - you recognize the
3-D style curtain outline the navigation header, which is simple - and
elegant. And then just three blog pages dress the navigation header:
- Blog: links to the
blog homepage
- Videos: links to a
custom video channel page in the blog
- Shop FP: links
back to the main website
And from a design aspect - you have to appreciate
the look with drawn curtains going down the sides of the pages - very
instinctual and effective.
Now, the opening page here is the blog homepage -
which after the navigation has your standard blog format and layout
with a search box, archives, categories, and a blog roll entitled
‘favorites’. They also added a store locator and 6 products that are
simple photos and text that link back to the main store. The column
layout is a three-column layout morphed into two columns, and in that
side right column they squeeze in the blog widgets. All of this is
complimented by a great ‘notebook’ style background. As complex and
rich as this design is overall - remember, it is their content that
gets the job done…not the design. Even though I truly applaud them on
such a layout - very engaging for a user to traverse through.
Finally, at the bottom of the page — a nice
connection with the footer, in relation to the header — similar to how
you tie any story together — you must connect the beginning with the
end of a story…as you do a website — design and content including.
Content of Free People.
Now, with any website, content is
king, always will be king, and on the Free People blog -
it is King. Content on blogs are crucial for search engines because you
can create thousands of keywords, all of it search engine friendly, and
all the content you create is new and updated - so search engines will
love you for it.
Free People does a fantastic job with approaching
the all around marketing term - “On Target, Off Topic”. Free
People have a target audience, girls, young women ages tween to 45;
easily, and for the more trendy women who may breach beyond that age -
even an older woman can wear their clothing. With that target audience
in thought - as a marketer - go ‘off topic’ for a bit, and consider
talking about content that is not directly related to you, but still,
in a way, is connected.
Free People’s breaks up its blog into 26 different
categories; topics such as art, books, decor, crafts, food, home
office, magazines, polls, music, and so on. At the same time, they
intermix direct categories related to some of their external social
media tools, such as their flickr, myspace, facebook, and download
pages.
The point is, their content is intellectually
placed, and interesting…which is even more important! They do
occasionally drop in content that will push a new outfit, piece of
clothing and so on…but not as often as you think. And they are blogging
everyday - with NEW content, and using this to their advantage.
Video.
Another aspect of their content they included was
a blog page devoted exclusively to video. This custom designed video
player they added features behind the scene videos of their monthly
catalog shoots, as well as a video featuring their 2007 holiday party.
These simple videos are barely 1:30 minutes long, edited with
appropriate music, mostly indie stuff, and cut to look a bit grainy and
eclectic, as their brand appropriately exhibits now.
This simple idea of placing video on the blog is a
great marketing tool. First, the video takes an editor, all of about an
hour to edit and post. From there…he can take this video - submit it to
any external video channels, i.e. YouTube, Viddler, and so on. They can
then upload them to their Facebook, MySpace, and Flickr pages - only
enhancing their exposure - through something as simple as video.
For those who don’t know what this is or means;
essentially this creates secondary brand exposure that allows you to
initially reach out to possible consumers who might not have seen your
brand before, allowing them to now find you. It also allows you to
create ‘backlinks’ to your website - this all counts in that SEO puzzle
so many clients and people I speak to are always trying to solve.
Final.
Here is the point about all this - what this blog
does right is pretty much EVERYTHING.
What they do wrong, next to NOTHING, nearly. And let’s be clear on
this, they have people who are supposed to be blogging and acting as
community managers to maintain this blog, and update their external
social networking profiles, and so on. This all takes time, and we all
know what time ends up being — $$$. But, the effect of what they have
created has allowed them to ‘connect’ with their consumers, and harness
new customers, and so on. Their blog has been around since November
2006, and has amassed a huge amount of traffic daily to the blog.
Agreed - they are a major brand and can spark that type of traffic, but
honestly, the simplicity behind their blog strategy only enhances those
numbers.
Any company or brand that is thinking of starting
a blog strategy need to follow a similar model in structuring their
content and direction when beginning or ‘changing up’ a blog for your
brand or product.
If you need help in developing a blog strategy for
your business, feel free to contact me @ anytime. nicholas.cifuentes@gmail.com
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