September 12, 2014

When Subtle Beats Aggressive for Your Blog Strategy

As a marketer, your job is to uncover the pain points and needs of your customers and prospects and clearly articulate how your company’s solutions can help resolve these issues. That definition is fairly simple, but you have a wide variety of options at your disposal to help you fulfill those responsibilities. In fact, on your blog alone you can approach marketing from several different angles.

At times, your blog strategy should be direct and even somewhat aggressive. For instance, say your company offers a network security product. The news is currently overflowing with stories about hacking and data breaches, and you should be capitalizing on those current events by driving home clearly that business absolutely need your solution. You need to explain clearly and forcefully that companies not adequately protecting their data put their entire operation at risk.  

In other circumstances, however, a subtler approach can be more effective. For instance, if your product helps businesses reduce their carbon footprint, you need to think carefully about how you want to present your value proposition. Chances are, consumers aren’t going to like reading about how they must adopt your solution immediately because what they use currently is destroying the environment.

As with any “green product,” cost savings that customers can reap through reduced resource consumption should be a major focus of your content creation. But you might also want to consider writing about all the positive effects sustainable technology has on the planet. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, and you’ll engage more customers by offering a new and interesting viewpoint instead of scolding or pressuring them.      

The logical question that follows is: how do you know when to take what approach? Answering these three questions before you start writing is a good start:

  • Who is the intended audience for this piece?
  • What is the goal of this post?
  • In what content am I writing this piece?

That last question in particular will help you decide whether to go with an aggressive or subtle tone. Still, making these critical decisions about your blog strategy can be complex and time-consuming. If you don’t have time to brainstorm topics, answer the three questions above and actually write the post and make edits, you might consider a content strategy vendor that can do all of those things for you.

A content strategy vendor keeps abreast of industry news and trends, comes up with blogging ideas and produces content, collaborating with your company along the way to ensure your brand message is delivered exactly as you want. Such a vendor conducts ongoing research and immerses itself in blog strategy and, as a result, offers a high-level expertise many companies do not have in-house. And, of course, a content strategy vendor understands that how you write is as important as what you write.

Want to get to know the Content Boost team a little better? Click here to read an employee spotlight on our Director of Content Marketing, Carrie Majewski.







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