"Should we write a blog?"
Whenever I introduce myself as a social media strategy consultant, this is very likely to be the first question I'm asked. My answer is always, "Maybe." I qualify my answer because blogging is a commitment of resources and doing it poorly is bad marketing, but many organizations in B2B or other specialty markets are wary for other reasons; they're used to marketing in the Long Tail economy where success isn't always a quantity game and they assume the main reason to blog is to go viral. A sign of this concern is when they say "but no one would post us to their Facebook." When they tell me this, I am always quick to assure them that no matter how arcane their subject is, if it matters to their customers then blogging on those subjects can be a powerful strategy for unearthing buried marketing treasure. Long Tail blogging means that high volume traffic numbers and viral appeal don't tell the most important part of the story and what matters is whether your blog positions you well with your most important audiences.
It's easy to get caught up in the stats, and we DO want to see the stats grow in any web communications effort, but Long Tail blogging is less about being the next viral phenom on Facebook or YouTube and more about leveraging existing web content and staff brainpower to reach a well-defined core audience in a way that more effectively positions the organization to that particular niche. This approach applies no matter how far down the tail you are. For this reason blogging in the Long Tail is a particularly powerful B2B marketing strategy in specialty areas with defined - even if narrow - audiences (e.g., chemicals processing or OEM equipment manufacturing).
Blogging takes effort and resources; if your audience is really small and well defined, is it worth it to blog in the Long Tail? Before I make a recommendation about blogging, I look at the client's web site to see if they're sitting on any content gold that positions them well vis-a-vis their competitors. As I dig through these web sites I'm looking for buried treasure which is not chock full of marketing lingo about themselves but of substantive insights, fact or analysis that adds to the industry's body of knowledge while demonstrating the company's expertise. Many older web sites, due to their by-necessity hierarchical nature, obscure these valuables under pages of marketing material, hiding it from site visitors and search engines which are looking for more topical and timely blog content. If the booty is there when I poke around, then "start blogging" may be one of my first recommendations because in the Long Tail there are several reasons to engage in content marketing with a blog.
- Relevant Web Traffic and leads: Written on short and pithy subjects, tagged blog articles can be specifically focused in narrow areas and thus easily search engine optimized for unique and high-value keyword searches. The people who tend to find narrowly focused articles are usually looking for narrowly focused information and - when they find it - they value it highly, saving it to bookmarking sites, referring to it on their own blogs and noting it in wikis. These kind of link-backs are not only valuable for the search traffic they might produce, but because of the qualified lead trail they leave behind to bring others to the post who also value the same highly-focused information. These organic content trails are more likely to produce qualified sales leads from people already on the hunt than the indiscriminate splash and banner ads. Building these valued link-backs may take time, but it's an investment which pays "free" dividends for years to come in the sense that once posted, the web's automated bots keep indexing it without the company doing anything but keeping the information up-to-date, accurate and re-optimized. [Read a case study on Emerson Process Management that demonstrates this principal of achieving greater exposure. The case study includes some great insights into how to set up a corporate blog working with subject matter experts.]
- Extended Collateral: When the sales team rushes in and demands a new sell sheet the marketing department predictably groans as they imagine iterations of nit picking ahead, all for one prospect in one portion of one sales cycle. After the nitpicking the collateral piece will often then be hidden on the intranet and be forgotten. However, if the blog strategy has been thoughtful, and a good editorial calendar adhered to, instead of a new sell sheet the prospect may be pleased with an email weaving together several blog articles which address their issues in the context of that particular sale. This approach is not only more personal and tailored than a new sell sheet, but can usually be pulled together quickly while demonstrating an ongoing commitment to customer issues and/or in-depth expertise. If the sell sheet request uncovers a missing piece, it may be a new blog article in the making, one that can be reused with other prospects in the future when that subject will make a difference for yet another sale. This is an example of how the blog articles become dual purpose, continuing to drive web traffic while also being useful in specific sales situations to demonstrate company capabilities.
- Public Relations Fodder: After a VP has spent hours polishing a nice slide deck for a speaking engagement, it's a shame to bury it on the intranet with that one-time sell sheet. Posted on the blog as a Slideshare, and perhaps elaborated on in a few posts by the expert VP, the presentation can live several times over, including becoming PR expertise with journalists tasked with covering a narrow niche without the benefit of in-depth knowledge.
This is Long Tail content marketing through blog posts - often operating under the radar of the big stats but making a difference for the people who matter - sales teams, prospects, customers and journalists.
Now sometimes the company web site is not hiding any shiny treasure and we have to decide whether it's worthwhile to manufacture it and create a blog. In this case I look a bit deeper to see if staking a blog claim in the Long Tail is a worthwhile exercise by asking these questions:
#1: Audience - How large, cohesive and web-attuned is their audience of customers, prospects and influencers? If the audience is cohesive and web attuned, then blogging may be a reasonable strategy to reach them and we move on to #2 and #3. But if the audience is fragmented, unlikely to seek web content to drive their decisions or establish the organization's credibility, or there are so few of them you can reach them all by phone in an afternoon, then blogging may not be the most cost-effective way to reach them.
#2: Capacity - How well-equipped is the client to create content of interest on an ongoing basis which will appeal to the audience? Even if they've invested in creating interesting content in the past, but currently have no one on board who can write, have no capacity or have no thought leadership easily at hand, then blogging may not be their best food forward either. If they're not able to invest in it directly, then a blog is a distraction from their true priorities there may be other pressing priorities such as lead generation or revenue support and it's better for them to do the essentials well rather than create poor content. (Note: an exception can be if there is thought leadership at hand but the thought leader needs writing assistance, though authenticity can be put at risk unless well managed).
#3: Differentiation - How well is the client differentiated in their marketplace? Blogs can help reinforce and demonstrate competitive differentiation more powerfully than all the marketing lingo in the dictionary, but if the organization's positioning is muddy or not well understood internally than a blog can actually have the opposite effect, confusing prospects and customers. If the differentiation isn't clear, I recommend a repositioning exercise so their blogging investment doesn't simply demonstrate how undifferentiated they are.
The logic above applies whether the audience size is a thousand or a billion and that's why it's a Long Tail question. No matter how quantitatively large its audience is, any organization can still do a great job positioning its brand qualitatively in a meaningful way with the people who matter most to its business. Actually, the smaller the audience, the easier it is to establish solid brand identity through blogs and other straightforward marketing efforts because at it's core, branding is simply the consistent application of audience- and organization-appropriate identity and messaging. Blogging in the Long Tail is a particularly powerful way to do this, but it certainly not the only way.
There are other reasons to blog in the Long Tail, which have to do with the evolving field of public relations, and I'll cover this in a second post in the near future.
