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Should Publishers Blog?

Once upon a time, blogging was considered amateur. Trained journalists and editors viewed platforms like Blogger and LiveJournal as communities where ‘just anyone could write.’ 

Well, that was precisely the point.

The biggest value proposition that blogging brought to the table was the democratization of great ideas. Anyone could launch their own blog and start writing--there was no formal education or media job required. That’s why blogging caught on. 

Today, mainstream media companies are harnessing the power of blogging. The Atlantic, a 158-year-old company, recently made the decision to launch a section of its site called Notes, which will be a place for “first thoughts, running arguments, stories in progress.”

Now, you have no excuses to say that ‘blogging isn’t for you.’ If The Atlantic can make such a bold move, so can you. Here are some ideas to keep in mind along the way:

The ‘Story Behind the Story’

The Internet has spoiled modern audiences. Curious and research driven, they’re looking for more than just the polished stories in front of them. They want to venture behind the scenes--something that mainstream media companies don’t have an outlet for on their core websites. 

Publishers can take a lesson from content marketers in that many business blogs provide community forums, in addition to opportunities for employees and awesome writers to share their favorite ideas. For a great example of a business blog providing a fun reading experience, check out Canva’s Design School. The content gives the software company a much-needed, ‘behind the scenes’ experience. In addition to experiencing Canva’s core product, you also learn what the company values.

As a media company, you have your own brand, too. Even though you’re publishing high-volume content, you may not be letting your inner voice and personality shine through. Every story has a story behind it--how an idea came to exist or where someone had to travel to find a source. It’s valuable to go off the record.

For a good idea of this idea in action, check out Slate’s ‘Dear Prudence’ column. Emily Yoffe frequently took her readers behind the scenes to share her thoughts and to catch readers up to where her letter writers are now. What’s interesting about the Slate example is that it’s integrated with the core site. But some media hubs aren’t able to pull this dynamic off and will need to launch an ‘off platform’ experience.

A Sense of Community

While news outlets are optimized around facts, blogs are optimized around opinions. It’s okay for writers to get a bit relaxed when creating blog content. Of course, writing needs to be factually accurate. But does it need to be grammatically perfect? No. Is it alright for witty writers to have their own opinions? Absolutely.

By letting your organization’s human voices shine through, you’ll naturally attract more people. Share thought provoking ideas on your blog, and encourage your audiences to leave comments and share their own ideas.

Blogs can create a sense of community on your website. Just look at The New York Times, as an example--a media company that is well-known for its rich commenting activity. When the New York Times recently went through a major redesign, one of the top complaints was that audiences were having trouble finding and tracking comments. 

Readers love the NYTimes comments so much that they complain when there’s a UX change. 

Test Beds for New Ideas

Media companies need to innovate too. While your taxonomy may be static, it will evolve over time--to keep audiences engaged, you may need to venture into new content areas. But how do you know, ahead of time, if a new idea is worth testing with your specific audience?

Blogs provide a testbed for new editorial ideas. Run your favorite new story ideas, promote what you write on your distribution channels, and measure the interest that you’re generating from readers. You can even use your blogs to test new technologies, run surveys, or collect interest-based data.

Your blogs, while providing awesome content to the world, will also provide sandboxes for testing. Make sure that your media company stays innovative and continues to build on its successes by deploying your ideas, faster.

So, Should Publishers Blog?

The decision of whether to blog will be different for different media companies--there is no such thing as a simple “yes” or “no.” If you’re wondering where to get started, take a look at your reader base’s existing content consumption patterns. Conduct a few qualitative interviews with them to understand what types of blogs and media sites they like to read. If you determine that a blog is in your audience’s best interest, go for it without thinking twice. Follow The Atlantic’s bold footsteps. 

The Difference Between Earned, Owned & Paid Media (And Why It Matters for Lead Gen)

An effective content strategy doesn’t rely on only one tactic.

Generating qualified leads requires you to regularly publish compelling, valuable content, explore guest blogging opportunities, identify co-marketing campaigns, and devise a strategy for promoting said content.

While content is a fairly general term, it's important to note that there are different types of media that can be leveraged in the process. Knowing the differences between each type of media -- earned, owned, and paid -- and how to combine them is critical to the success of your lead generation efforts. 

To help you effectively execute on all three, we'll walk you through the nuances of each below, as well as some suggestions on how to leverage them for your company.

The Difference Between Earned, Owned, and Paid Media

Combining earned, owned, and paid media will help you attract, nurture, and close leads, but what do those terms really mean? And when it comes to your company's content strategy, how do they fit into the equation?

While all three media efforts are important to your overall goals and should converge in your strategy, there are still distinct differences.

Earned Media

Quite simply, earned media refers to media exposure you’ve earned through word-of-mouth. Whether it was the fantastic content you've distributed, the influence of your SEO efforts, the customer experience you've delivered, or a combination of all three, earned media refers to the recognition you receive as a result.

You can earn media by getting press mentions, positive reviews, reposts, recommendations, etc. You can also facilitate earned media by helping journalists and content writers author their articles, or contributing your own thought leadership content to industry publications. 

Thanks to the rise in popularity of social media platforms like Twitter and Quora, it has become easier for content writers and journalists to reach out to your business for quotes and insights to mention in their articles. This type of accreditation helps build trust around your expertise.

At Influence & Co., we earn most of our media through press mentions with our partners and our own guest-contributed content. For example, our co-founder, John Hall, has a regular column on Forbes, where his contributed content helps to drive both traffic and leads for our company.

So whether you're earning mentions on external sites or you've earned an opportunity to contribute to them regularly, this type of media helps to fuel the top of your funnel and introduce you to new leads.

Owned Media

Owned media is content you’re in full control of. Think of content for your company website, your blog, and your social media accounts.

While owned media content can take on a variety of forms -- blog posts, case studies, whitepapers, etc. -- the primary goal of this content is to continue providing value to leads as they move down the funnel. These assets offer a more controlled -- but not overly promotional -- message about your company.

So if you're looking to warm up leads that you've generated with earned media or win over some more, it's important that you're focusing on producing these educational, valuable resources. At the end of the day, this content can help leads determine whether or not working with you is the right choice for them.

Paid Media

While today’s media influx may make it difficult to get your company’s message heard organically, it also brings with it an influx of methods to promote it. Paid media serves as a method for promoting content and driving exposure. And there are variety of paid techniques you can use to amplify your owned media and help you win more earned media. 

For example, social media platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Pinterest offer advertising options that can be leveraged to boost your exposure. We’ve found that LinkedIn and Twitter are the most effective promotion platform for our audience of B2B marketers, but you can utilize a similar strategy on Facebook or Pinterest. It all depends on where your target audience is the most active and engaged with your brand.

How to Use Paid Media to Amplify Your Owned Media

As I mentioned before, combining these elements can prove to be really powerful in terms of generating and engaging leads. To help illustrate this, let's dive into two examples of content promotion tactics that my company has successfully utilized to amplify our owned media.

LinkedIn Sponsored Updates

Our marketing team utilizes sponsored updates on LinkedIn to promote our gated content. We set a budget for each campaign; target users based on interest, industry, and job title; and deliver a link to a landing page with a relevant piece of gated content.

Our reasoning behind promoting gated content via sponsored updates verses our blog content goes back to the idea of delivering the right content to your audience, through the right medium, at the right time. We’ve found that when our audience is on LinkedIn, it’s the perfect time to serve up a piece of gated content.

For example, when looking at the performance of our sponsored posts, we found that the offers that linked straight to a landing page converted at a 500% higher visitors-to-leads conversion rate than sponsored posts that link to blog content.

Promoted Tweets

We’ve also recently seen success with promoting tweets that have the most engagement. For instance, we promoted this tweet about our “5 Unexpected Content Marketing Trends from CMI’s 2016 Report” blog post after we saw that it was garnering a lot of initial engagement. It generated an additional 111 clicks to the post with only $50 in ad spend.

Promoting tweets is a great way to boost the reach of your most engaging tweets and get them in front of a new audience. To determine whether a tweet is worthy of promotion, we ask ourselves two questions:

• Did it perform well? When a post is performing well organically, it will automatically perform better than your other posts when you sponsor them. Our rule of thumb is to only promote the top 1-3% of tweets that have gotten the most engagement recently.
• Is the content you’re promoting converting well? If we’re considering promoting a tweet, we look at the piece of content it references to determine the conversion rate of that piece. If it didn't perform well, we try to pick a new tweet that links to a high-performing piece of content or look at how we can optimize the blog post for better conversion before putting dollars behind promoting it on social media.

How does your company leverage earned, owned, and paid media? Share your experiences in the comments section below.

Daily Search Forum Recap: November 30, 2015

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...