Blogging/content strategy

[S.S.N]

While personal blogging & branding is pretty typical for those in a service/b2b industry, when it comes to CEOs/owners of retail businesses - not so much.

We have a company blog right now that is heavy on company news and updates - and will be working towards being more informational/educational. But, in the meantime, it's difficult getting the ok to contribute to contributor based article/resource sites - such as http://smallbiztrends.com, since the business blog, by nature, is promotional. (our clients are both business & consumer)

Assuming, we can generate enough content, my suggestion is to have the owner create a personal blog which will be purely information and educational, and use that blog to account for the owner's expertise and use those articles as means to get accepted as a contributor at highly prized sites. At the same time, we would still have a business blog that combines educations & company news/promotional.

Does this seem like a sound strategy? or is it better to just build up the company blog as an educational resource. Will reputable sites be ok with an educational company blog?

[Chris.Menke]

If the owner isn't already actively blogging and been doing so for some time (meaning that he likes doing it, is accustomed to taking the time to do it, and is likely to continue doing it for a good deal of time into the future), hire a writer/ghost writer, instead. Map out an editorial calendar based on the kinds of content that will be acceptable to the highest quality sites you're able to get articles published on have the owner add a bunch of expert bullet points under each article topic and have the writer go at it.  This way, your effort will be much more sustainable.

[S.S.N]

Thanks.. so, you support the idea of having a blog separate from the company blog? Or, can it be part of the current company blog?

[ReferralCandy]

In fact, I would suggest working on your company blog instead of creating a new one. Even though the content on your company blog may not yet be optimal as an education resource, I'm sure your company blog has a current following which you can count on. If people are already following your company updates, the likelihood of them being interested in information related to your industry is quite high.

Work on creating quality educational posts that would be relevant to your target audience, alongside with your company updates. This would keep existing followers coming back for a fresh set of content, and attract potential customers through the educational posts.

Creating a new blog in this situation wouldn't benefit much. You would end up trying to optimise the new blog for SEO and having to attract the same group of people again, which I believe you already have in the company blog.

[MoosaHemani]

In my personal opinion you should drop the idea of a separate blog and work on your company’s blog and make it a one stop resource for people within your industry and for your customers. If owner’s branding is one of the important part for you then just go with author tag and author profile!

Stay active on social media profiles and communicate with your audience instead of giving them a feeling that your blog or website is a one way communication!

Adding another blog will just only increase your efforts and will not really offer you valuable returns.

Hope this helps!

[Ron_McCabe]

I think Chris had some good suggestions.  I would add the following comments.  1) I would encourage your CEO or a ghost writer to start doing blog entries.  I would add this as a blog category.  In this way it is not going to look bad or screw things up if he does not always get a blog out.  Once your CEO has built up a few blog entries it might be good to add a list of prior blog entries next to his profile.  This would be a good way for people to get a feel for how he thinks and what he believes in.

I do think it is a good idea to hire a ghost writer(I admit I am biased as that is one of the services my company provides). However I would strongly recommend that your CEO participate in the process and approve the final blog so that the blog has his voice.

Even though you did not ask about this I thought I would also mention that you might want to add a newsletter archive as a category as well.  This is a good way to keep old newsletters as a reference for those that are interested and increase your content at the same time.

Ron

[Chris.Menke]

The kind of content I'm talking about would go on the company blog, primarily, and the rest on quality publishers' sites within your theme via outreach.