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Blogging and Content Marketing: Results Versus Personality

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blogging and the balance between personality and efficiencyA corporate blog has a purpose. In fact, it can serve several purposes. So, it’s obvious you want to get results with your blog. However, the rules and best practices of efficient blogging should not undermine vision and personality. Blogging and content marketing are a balancing act.

Content is produced by people for people, with a focus on human needs, preferences and business purposes. Blogs are also written by people. They offer the opportunity to put the human capital that co-defines your brand in the interaction spotlight, instead of your business and products themselves. The people that ‘make’ your brand are your ‘internal customers’ (employees) as well as your ‘external’ clients (buyers, prospects and all who find themselves within the social ecosystem of your company).
Bloggers have an opinion and personality. They also have a narrative which is important for your business and for other people who are interested in the activities or the market in which you operate.

A corporate blog without personality and passion makes no sense

If you wish to blog in a relevant and people-centric way, it is important to give the personality, passion and insights of your bloggers the necessary freedom and space for expression, interaction and growth. If blogging is just a task, you better not do it.

This doesn’t mean some structure, and planning is unnecessary. You need a plan for your corporate blog that includes editorial calendars and a content grid in which your blog posts, just like other content marketing activities, are coupled to the business purposes and to the needs of the people you wish to interact with. However, this structured approach should not be an excuse to leave out the personality and authenticity.

Nothing is as deadly as a boring blog without passion, opinion or personality. The content on your blog will only ‘work’ if it meets the human demands of your (potential) customers. The needs and journey of ‘customers’ should be at the heart of your content. However, this is also the case for your “internal” customers: your blogging crew has needs as well. It’s not only about what they want to write or what people want to read, it’s a combination.

Of course, there are differences between several types of blogs: a personal blog is different  as a corporate blog or the blog of an online medium. However, despite these differences,  a blog without personality as well as an individual approach and dialogue, is pointless. Each blogger has an own style. I sometimes write longer and more ‘educational’ and even ‘philosophical’ posts, occasionally shorter ones with tips and reflections, and often very personal ones, which have a message – and which may be unclear to many. That is my style, my personality.

The rules of the art of blogging

Obviously, as a company you do not only blog for fun (although I hope you do have fun so that ‘readers’ sense the passion). Personality, dialogue and authenticity are all very important, but you also would like to see results (you can read how to measure one of them in this post).

It is necessary that ‘your’ bloggers, or the people who manage your blog(s), know about the art of SEO, the rules of efficient blogging, etc. Most of those rules are known.

Here are just a few of these blogging rules:

  • Select a keyword for which you want to optimize the post.
  • Make the title at most 70 characters so it fully appears in search engines.
  • Use an SEO plug-in (or SEO-friendly theme) and write a short summary of the post for search engines.
  • Check the keyword density.
  • Ensure that the keywords in the post are emphasized by placing them in special HTML tags.
  • Add images or other content elements, which are contextually relevant and useful for the reader.
  • Describe images and other elements in special tags.
  • Write in function of the reader and of relevance (and thus social sharing potential).
  • Make sure there are internal and external links.
  • Keep the posts sufficiently short (but not too short), use white space, bullet points, etc.
  • Have an engaging title to draw the attention.
  • Use the reversed pyramid writing style.

The attention of the visitor is short, so you must focus on captivating and retaining this attention.

Efficient blogging versus personal blogging?

blogging and the balance between personality and resultsThere are many thousands of bloggers who know all these rules and who apply them – sometimes to preposterous extremes. These bloggers generate a lot of traffic to their blogs, and are respected for their easy to read tips, tricks and thoughts.

They also know a generally accepted presumption concerning content: people often like to have snackable content.

There is fundamentally nothing wrong with focusing on results by applying all the well-known rules of blogging and even A/B testing content elements, titles and call-to-actions on your blog.

However, one should question if this does not skew the balance too much towards traffic and direct business aims; and if it does not undermine your vision and personality. Because finally this is what matters most: who you are, what you represent, how you help people to find what they seek, what you offer and mean to others, and therefore, with whom you enter a dialogue.

Traffic is the Holy Grail for many, but it is not an aim. The real aim is to arrive at significant interactions with people who are equally significant for you, and who, therefore take the effort to read and react to your posts, even if they don’t comply with the ‘rules and best practices’.

Efficient blogging and personal blogging are not an Or/Or dilemma, but an And/And story. It is a balance. To which side it slants is your own decision. The danger of uniformity, conformity and commoditization is always present when it comes down to blog posts and content in general.

Personality, relevance and dialogue often do not go well with that. There is no need to be a conformist, even when it concerns results and efficiency.


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