Advantages University - Better Your Reach With Blogs
By Tonia Cook Kimbrough
May 2009
If you haven't already, it's time to enter the blogosphere - that online community of commentators that post regular content about their areas of interest and expertise.
Get Blogging Quickly
Google the phrase “steps to start a blog” and you’ll find myriad Web sites and experts to walk you through the process.
Begin by choosing a blogging software program. Many are free. A couple of popular options in this category can be found at www.blogger.com and www.wordpress.com. Both of these sites provide tutorials and automated set-up programs to hold your hand through the creation of a blog. You’ll get to choose a template and upload photos, set up tags … everything to get you blogging successfully.
Remember to personalize your blog by sharing a little background about yourself. Include your photo and bio. Write your posts in the first person, in a conversational style. For copywriting tips specific to blogging, check out www.copyblogger.com.
Benchmark Blogging
Curious what the competition is doing, or wish to benchmark against other distributor salespeople? Blogs offer you an opportunity to stay abreast of selling trends, new product ideas and imprinting solutions from industry colleagues.
Check out the “Social” section of www.asicentral.com. Here you’ll find a listing of top-notch industry-related blogs on topics including promotional products, apparel, decoration, trade shows and sales.
Award-Winning Blogging
Look to the best of the blogs for ideas. There are many Web sites and organizations that now recognize blogs of excellence. Here are a few to review for inspiration as well as to submit your own expertly executed blog for an award of its own:
• www.bloggerschoiceawards.com – The Bloggers’ Choice Awards are sponsored by social media marketer IZEA Inc. The site allows users to nominate, vote for and comment on blogs in more than 30 categories. For 2009 there’s already a posting for a promotional products blog (www.thepromomarketer.com) in the “Best Blog About Stuff” category.
• www.weblogawards.org – Weblog Awards are billed as “the world’s largest blog competition.” Over 933,022 votes were cast in 48 categories in choosing the 2008 Weblog winners. A category winner definitely worth a peek is Best Culture Blog (www.thecoolhunter.net),
a fun way to track trends in gadgets, fashion, design, advertising and much more.
• www.2009.bloggies.com – Bloggies are the longest-running weblog awards nominated and voted on by blog readers.
• www.thebobs.com – The annual international weblog awards called BOBs are organized by Deutsche Welle, Germany’s international public broadcaster. Both juried and people’s choice awards are given in 11 different languages. You’ll also find an international “blogopedia” at this Web site, where you can search a collection of blogs by topic, country, language and author.
Blog Lingo Defined
There’s a whole lexicon that rules the blogosphere. Get up to speed with www.blogossary.com. Here you’ll find a search-friendly definitions list of commonly used terms. A few worth noting:
Aggregator is a type of software that pulls information from various Web feeds you have selected and displays any updates made to them.
Bleg is to write a blog entry or comment for the sole purpose of asking for something.
Blogfolio is an online journal created to display the author’s or creator’s work.
Blogroll is a list of links to other blogs or Web sites that the author of the blog regularly likes to read. The blogroll generally resides in one of the side columns of the blog.
Dooce means to fire someone due to entries posted on their blog.
Moblog (or mobile blog) is a journal that is updated primarily from a mobile device, and generally (but not always) while the author is on the road or traveling.
Vlog is short for video blog. A blog comprised mainly of videos.
10 Topics Worth A Blog
Look for inspiration every day, every place for your blog entries. Here are some topics worth considering for your next post.
New products – Collect information from supplier fliers, trade shows, rep visits to share with your readers. Give examples of how the product can be used in a promotion and imprinted.
Trends at retail – Watch for colors, styles and product categories that capture the consumer imagination at malls and online stores. Discuss how these trends can be leveraged to make a promotional product program all the more effective.
Seasons – When rainy spring days roll around, talk about ponchos and umbrellas. As cold winter days approach, remind readers of the advertising mileage gained from warm fleece wearables. Think of each season and write about applicable products.
Events – Share a story about your own attendance at an event, then riff on how promotional products were used or could have been used to make the occasion successful.
Cause awareness – Days, weeks and months are designated to build awareness. Pick out a few cause-related occasions to discuss on your blog. Maybe it’s National Pet Week in May that inspires you to write a blog post about pet-related imprinted products, or America Recycles Day in November that prompts an entry about the vast array of ad specialties made of recycled materials or those that are recyclable.
Case histories – Tout effective campaigns (with client permission, of course), explaining the products used, audience reached and measures of success. How can the lessons learned be applied to other types of clients and situations?
Statistics – Pass along research findings and statistics that position ad specialties as the powerful tools they are. For example, write a blog post about the recent Advertising Specialties Impressions Study conducted by the Advertising Specialty Institute.
Demographics – Share your expert knowledge of choosing products that match an audience. Your own life is a great place for ideas. Maybe you’ve just witnessed your teenager’s obsession with technology; how could that desire be tapped with promotional products?
Decorating techniques – Follow imprinting trends and blog about creatively applying them to the products you sell.
Measurement – Occasional blog posts about cost-per-impression, frequency, reach and return on investment show that you understand that ad specialties must achieve demonstrable success.
Tip
Reward the Blog-Reading Faithful
Give customers more of a reason to read your blog than just witty charm and expert insights. Slip them a special only for blog readers every so often.
For example, maybe you’ve just written a blog about a fabulous new travel mug. Extend a discount to those readers who mention the blog post when they place an order with you for the featured item. Be sure to tout the fact that only readers get special discounts when you promote the blog to your customer base. This will help drive traffic to your Web page and encourage folks to subscribe to your blog.
Use Blogs To Upsell
An educated client will be your most lucrative customer because they make better choices. A blog provides an excellent platform to teach the value of spending a little more on good quality. You can do this without seeming at all self-serving – as long as you offer legitimate reasoning.
A perfect example of this technique comes from a Promopeddler blog post (December 10, 2008) titled, “Genuine, Full Grain, Top Grain or Bonded leather, what’s the difference?” After an entertaining, succinct discussion of each leather type (including the comparison of bonded leather to the making of hot dogs, “all sorts of pieces of ‘leather scraps’ or raw fibers are put into a vat with glue and then rolled out into sheets”), Promopeddler goes on to advise readers judiciously. The bottom line: Buyers will be best served to choose full-grain leather products to impress high-level executives. Save bonded leather for less status-sensitive promotions such as debossed coasters advertising a new beer.
Definitions
RSS and Feed
“RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and is used to describe the technology used in creating feeds. A feed, also known as RSS feed, XML feed, syndicated content, or Web feed, is frequently updated content published by a Web site. It is usually used for news and blog Web sites, but can also be used for distributing other types of digital content, including pictures, audio or video. Feeds can also be used to deliver audio content (usually in MP3 format) which you can listen to on your computer or MP3 player. This is referred to as podcasting.” – Source: Windows Internet Explorer Help Index
