wordpressrobot.com

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 evenly, as I do for all my clients, is research – taking notice of the growing digital space around me – thinking of thoughts 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 newest events in your trade, place forward reviews, insights, and so on.

This expands into relationship building tools, as you are able to speak more unreservedly 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 stay your main website and then click your links and possibly buy your product.

It also offers insight for your customers, and allows them to leave comments and ’speak’ to you on a key amount. In addition, blogs are extremely search engine friendly – through thousands of possible keywords and fresh, updated content on a fixed basis – blogs are simply fantastic facets to have on your website today.  Your simply misguided if you reckon otherwise.

*Read More for a detailed blog breakdown of the standard clothing line Free People.

Now, a further aspect of blogs I delight in are making them, not only content strategy, but programming and designing them on a unique amount.  One aspect of ‘branding’ a blog is considering the number of possibilities you have when really build the blog.

These are all vital questions you MUST reckon about previous to diving into the blog space – thinking you know what to do, when you might need a refresher.

And permanently remember that blogs vary, depending if you are in the business-to-consumer or business-to-business parallel – but your Plot of Action (POA) should permanently 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 a further 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 excellent 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 part of the blog that draws instant attention.  It’s 3-D style and moving parts, keeps the user engaged enough to go 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 learn its right meaning.

A further side point here – naming your blog a touch different and marketing that along side your main brand is a nice exchange of pace on occasion.  But it won’t work for everyone – so carefully reckon about that previous to you go off and name your blog a touch completely different.  The nice touch here is that ‘Caravan of Curiosities’ still has an engaging tone to it, and how they show it in the blog is effectual 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:

 

 

And from a design aspect – you have to appreciate the look with drawn curtains going down the sides of the pages – very instinctual and effectual.

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 harvest 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 fantastic ‘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.

Irrevocably, at the bottom of the page — a nice connection with the footer, in relation to the header — similar to how you tie any tale together — you must connect the beginning with the end of a tale…as you do a website — design and content including.

Content of Free People.

Now, with any website, content is king, permanently will be king, and on the Free People blog – it is King.  Content on blogs are crucial for search engines because you can make thousands of keywords, all of it search engine friendly, and all the content you make is new and updated – so search engines will like 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 peddler – go ‘off topic’ for a bit, and consider talking about content that is not frankly 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 outdoor social media tools, such as their flickr, myspace, facebook, and download pages.

The point is, their content is intellectually placed, and appealing…which is even more vital!  They do occasionally drop in content that will push a new outfit, piece of clothing and so on…but not as evenly as you reckon.  And they are blogging everyday – with NEW content, and using this to their advantage.

Video.

A further 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, frequently indie material, and cut to look a bit grainy and eclectic, as their brand appropriately exhibits now.

This simple thought of placing video on the blog is a fantastic 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 outdoor 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 a touch as simple as video.

For those who don’t know what this is or means; essentially this makes lesser brand exposure that allows you to initially reach out to possible consumers who might not have seen your brand previous to, allowing them to now find you.  It also allows you to make ‘backlinks’ to your website – this all counts in that SEO puzzle so many clients and people I speak to are permanently trying to solve.

Final.

Here is the point about all this – what this blog does right is pretty much EVERYTHING. What they do incorrect, 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 outdoor 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 produced 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 early a blog strategy need to follow a similar model in structuring their content and management when beginning or ‘varying 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