Blog Training 101: Review Before You Launch
Within the first 60 seconds after responding to a press release inviting me to visit a new business blog launch I was lost, irritated and disappointed.
I chose to go directly to the retail site first. Irritated by a musical greeting that I have to mute, I forgo looking at inventory and am amazed to find that there is no link referring to their blog. In one fell swoop they invited me to a launch, gave me bad directions to get there and had nothing for me when I finally arrived.
I was promised blog content that would provide - “unbiased reviews with competitive products, industry news, and online resource information…” -but was actually greeted by two meager introductory posts.
There are many lessons to be garnered by this example but a quick summation will suffice for now.
- Lesson #1.
Integrate your blog platform with your website for seamless navigation. It is integral to you business site, not an extra appendage. - Lesson #2.
Do not launch a new blog until you are ready. Do a pre-launch. Have employees, associates, customers navigate your new site and make recommendations. - Lesson #3
This lesson can be summed up with this excerpt from our RSS Publishing Guide offered with our blog training course. Have a feast of content ready, not a few trays of hors d’oeuvres.
“Bloggers or visitors always look for mass and variety in content. It’s not sensible at all to publish your articles if you have just recently enabled your RSS feed. Don’t expect your potential readers to be happy with just one article to view. Active bloggers and potential link partners will not be attracted until they see a pipeline of relevant information. Imagine searching on Google for the word “car” and one result pops up. This is a clear example of why you should not publish until you have written and archived at least a dozen articles.
You can download a PDF of our RSS Publishing Guide here.
Tags: Blog Training, blog-content, blog-launch, integrated-blog, rss-marketing