The Art of Blogging – Why Don’t Big Brands Blog on their Websites?

This is one common question that we see being asked in our online digital marketing course forums by our participants. In the final assignments, a number of our students indicate that big brands, from Starbucks to Nike, are missing blogs. That is not entirely true. Read on and see why.

What is Blogging?

Initially, blogging involved a personal web log, started by Jon Barger in 1997. This web log would require a person to keep an e-journal about their day. From “web log” evolved the term “blog.”

Like most new innovations on the Internet, many entrepreneurs saw a marketing potential in starting and maintaining a blog, and blogging became a hit. Not only can a blog be used for marketing, but also, it can be a home business in and of itself.

The blog does not have to be named “the blog”. There are various other names you can give it, such as:

• Latest News
• News Bulletin
• News report
• Press Releases
• Latest Updates
• Market Updates
• Industry Updates

However you want to call it, you need to have a section on your website where you publish fresh, regular content to be successful in digital marketing, especially with SEO and content marketing.

Important Blogging Key Terms to Know

Archives

Blog archives refer to the history of your blog. While the most recent posts appear on the blog’s home page, your older posts are buried from sight. This makes it very difficult for someone visiting your website to find them unless they search on Google or via your website’s custom search bar. With the help of the archive feature, you are able to resurrect your old posts. There are multiple ways of doing this – through a WordPress widget called “Popular Posts” and a WordPress plugin called Relevant Posts. It is up to you to set it up in a way to make it user friendly.

Feed & Subscribe

The feed is essentially a news feed that fans can subscribe to for timely updates. There are two ways that web users can subscribe to your feeds and that is through RSS reader or via e-mail. Successful bloggers and webmasters strategically place their subscribe buttons, a form of call to action, on various parts of their website/blog and social media channels. They also do A/B testing to ensure the buttons are user friendly.

Syndication

Content syndication refers to posts, articles or any other piece of content you may have written that are featured on popular sites relevant to your industry. Meaning, your blog is picked up by the third parties, and your piece is quoted on another blog or news source. This opportunity can lead you to a number of open doors. However, you should approach content syndication with caution as low-ranked websites that use linking for spam may end up hurting your rankings on search engines.

Comments

A comment is basically an opinion of your readers left in response to what they read on your blog. A comment is a good way to connect with your audience. It is recommended to freely give users access to and make it easier for them to connect, which usually means not monitoring comments for approval and only deleting truly offensive/inappropriate and “spam” comments.

Trackbacks

A trackback is a form of “blog conversation” that links two or more relevant blog entries together. One blogger writes an article that references or is relevant to another blog’s article and fills out the trackback section. When the blogger publishes the article the blog leaves a trackback on the other blog’s article, which usually appears in the comments area as a truncated summary with a link

Pingbacks

Pingback notifies other bloggers on your behalf that you have linked to their article on your website. They can choose to share the news of a pingback with their bloggers on their website; making it reciprocal linking. Depending on how your WordPress theme is configured, pingbacks on your site may or may not show an excerpt of content from the other person’s blog.

DMAC – Online Digital Marketing Courses and Training

DMAC (Digital Marketing Academy of Canada) offers online courses focusing on social media marketing and digital marketing. We also provide customized social media marketing training (webinars or seminars) for businesses or organizations looking to commence or upgrade their internal digital marketing capabilities. For more content marketing terms and their definitions as well as tips on how to set up your onsite blog, click here to enroll in our online digital marketing courses.