Guest post by Jeff Lewis, Group M Public Relations & Cross Media Marketing
It’s been a while since my last post here on PrintMediaCentr, much to the dismay of its fabulous leader, Deb Corn.
“Jeff…send me another blog,” she’d beg me. “The readers love you!”
Ack…so much pressure!
Blogs are a great tool for business. They are particularly useful when you have a message or an idea to communicate, and open up discussions. It’s great to blog on a regular basis, especially if your audience looks to you for advice in a particular field. The last thing I want to do, however, is waste Deb’s time, your time or my own time.
One of the best aspects of blogging is that you aren’t locked into a precise schedule unless you set it for yourself. Online, I don’t have to “stop the presses” or let a finished article sit around until the next scheduled publication time. I also don’t have to post an article that wasn’t ready yet.
What’s important about blogging is to live up to the promises that you make for your blog and to your audience. My promise is to blog nuggets of helpful information about social media, publicity and marketing. These nuggets won’t be served before they are ready or after they are overcooked…they’ll be just right and easy to digest (I often find food metaphors are awesome). I’m wasting your time if I fail to provide useful content and instead only rant about politics or the entertainment industry.
So without wasting any more of your precious time, here are four, simple business blogging etiquette tips:
1- Stick to topics that are in your area of expertise. Don’t muddy up your business blog with extended rants about something more personal to you. Some of the folks you do business with may know of your fascination with the future colonies on Mars, but keep that separate, or at least to a minimum.
2- Deliver helpful content and unique ideas. If you produce vehicle wraps, share an unusual application technique, talk about using vehicles for advertising or how a vehicle with a design that’s too overpowering can cause driving distractions.
3- Start a conversation around something controversial. Standard inks vs. Eco-friendly inks! Times New Roman vs. Comic Sans! Stir the pot and get people talking.
4- Don’t overstuff your followers with everything that can possibly be said all at once; that is too much content for a blog. Keeping it fewer than 400 words is a good rule of thumb. If you do have a lot to offer, break it down into smaller bites distributed over several blogs, or direct readers to additional content so they can learn more.
Follow these rules and each meal will be tastier, er…blog will be better than the last.
Jeff Lewis is the vice president of Media Relations for Group M Public Relations & Cross Media Marketing in New York. He is a former journalist who still carries a journalist’s mindset. His clients have been featured on websites, in technology publications, on cable news and in newspapers of all sizes. Jeff has also contributed to the PrintMediaCentr’s blog on other marketing topics such as social media and press releases. Feel free to connect with him on LinkedIn, follow him on Twitter, or like Group M’s Facebook page. When he is not securing placements for his clients he can be found skiing, gardening, editing home videos or trying to finish that darn Stephen King book he’s been slogging through since last August.
2 Responses
Thank you so much for the tips, Jeff! I’ve also found that consistency is extremely important when it comes to blogs. If blog posts don’t maintain some sort of constant schedule, if they are being posted only once in a blue moon, then people are less likely to depend on them for content.
msienicki good point. ultimately I still fall on the side of providing excellent content, whether on schedule or in due time.