Inbound Marketing created a stellar one hour webinar that you can get from Hubspot for free! The webinar takes a practical look at the key elements of an effective blog, and then goes into some detailed Q & A.
If you want to have a laugh – http://daleburks.webs.com/
Three best practices that I recommend are:
1. Blogging about the bigger picture. Staying on point and being relevant, but avoiding being promotional. Several examples were given in the webinar. For instance, a bicycle company wrote about riding and racing, while there were bicycle specials on the sidebar. Clearly, creating interesting reading is a challenge; but by being on point and writing about a real application would be much more enjoyable than reading long ad copy.
2. Writing well – doing the best one can to post well-written material. There are many ways to spell check, limited ability to grammar check, but by practicing good writing skills, and then reviewing the material, one can pass the litmus test of good writing.
3. Keeping the blog enjoyable. For instance, I am a fanatic about the simple search, “How to ….” I search how to use my iPhone, how to walk my dog, best ways to play with Bionicles, simply everything I do I search to see what I’m missing. I love these searches and I typically end up laughing, and on some exotic website, or finding new music. That is enjoyable blogging. And, yes, I ‘usually’ return to thank the bloggers for the journey.
Here’s the link to the Inbound Marketing webinar. My thanks to Ann Handley and Mack Collier for their expertise. And, of course, to Hubspot for all the free education they provide the world on social media, sales 2.0 tools, and crazy new marketing processes.
Keeping it brief by design.
Dale Burks 