AAF-Cleveland Professional Development: “Bloggers & Brands” Recap

Did you know that over 150 million blogs exist on the internet? Not only do blogs help with the search engine optimization (SEO) component of company websites, but they also create brand awareness. With various content marketing efforts going into every brand’s overall marketing strategy, blogging is just one small puzzle piece of the greater picture.

The end goal of all of these efforts is always the same: to increase sales.

Today, my coworker and I attended an AAF-Cleveland Professional Development luncheon where we heard from a panel of digital marketing experts, including Ashley Szeremet (STEP2), Kelly McGlumphy (GOJO), and Amber Matheson (Diebold, Inc.) on how blogging is increasing their brand awareness strategies and growing their companies. Below are my top three key takeaways from today’s event:

1. Identify with Your Audience

Finding a way to identify with your target audience starts with drafting in depth buyer personas. Before you can sell your product or service to your ideal customer, you need to reach them at a conversational level. In the end, these people are out there trying to do their job the best that they can.

Remember: At the end of the day, we are all just people.

2. Figuring out Your Blog

When launching a blog or continuing one that’s been running for years, it’s important to determine what your company will be using it for. If sales is the end goal, which is most common, then you need to figure out what types of blog posts are working and which types are not. Generating additional content each week based on your posts with the greatest traction represents a great strategy.

Quick Tip: Guest blogging is a strategy that many of the panelists at the luncheon have found to work with a positive response.

3. Quantity vs. Quality

When it comes to a blog posting schedule and cadence, you may think that quality always matters over quantity. With blogging, they both matter from a search engine optimization standpoint. You need to create quality content that your potential buyers will find while conducting a search on the internet, but you also need to have the content out there that they are searching for.

Try: Finding keywords that your buyers are searching for online and creating content around that material. This way, you’ll pop up high enough on their search results page.

Do you have any rules of thumb or common best practices when it comes to blogging? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!