Here’s how to generate blog and Facebook content that gets the job done — and avoids the cringe factor
What follows is a true story. The names have been changed to protect the embarrassed.
Imagine that you are an ad agency in search of a technology partner for some upcoming projects and proposals. You do your research, come up with a couple of candidates, and contact them.
Between the time that you leave a voicemail for the CEO of one of them, and the time that he calls you back — not long; less than two hours — you go back to the website to explore some of the company’s portfolio examples and case studies in detail.
On a blog maintained by one of the company’s executives and featured prominently on their home page, there’s a description of an intriguing and innovative project. And these sentences:
“While the technology is exciting, in our opinion the execution was sub-par. We blame the lazy ad agency that the client hired to design the interface.”
Really. It really said that.
By the time the CEO called back, the last of those two sentences was burned into my brain. I don’t know anything about the ad agency or the partnership. I don’t want to know. I just know that I don’t want to risk being called a “lazy ad agency” for posterity. So even though I tried to have a polite conversation with the CEO, I wound up telling him we weren’t interested in doing business with his company — and why.
He was surprised and embarrassed. He had no idea that his exec’s blog entry said that. (The offending language was removed within minutes of our conversation.) He apologized. He explained that their blog entries are triggered by their SEO specialist, who prompts one of the blogging execs to write a new entry when needed. The strategy is working as part of their other SEO efforts; they regularly rank at the top of search engine results.
But they forgot something important: if you do it right, the content you write for SEO — for machines — will also be read by people. Machines can only take you so far: they’ll score your content and place you where they think it’s appropriate in search engine results. But only human beings can act on your content in a away that benefits your bottom line. Search-engine algorithms don’t have money. People do.
SEO is a path to human beings, not a goal in itself
“You’re not writing for people, you’re writing for Google.”
This was the amusing reminder given to me by a friend and colleague, when I first began writing this blog. Back then, no one was reading it except Google, Yahoo, and Bing. In most cases, it takes a long time, and a lot of effort, to build an audience of human followers. So it’s easy to forget that readers are at the end of that chain.
You may start a blog or Facebook page to increase your SEO rankings. But if you’re successful, people will read it. And what they read had better be something you’ll be proud of.
The Internet is Not Invisible
Only eleven years separate us from the previous century, but in that time, there’s been a sea change that’s hard for many of us to internalize:
Anything that’s posted to the public Internet is instantly visible to nearly everyone in the world, and it has the potential to stay public forever.
Most of the time, that’s a good thing. But if you forget those facts, it can backfire. Ask any old-school politician who forgets that you can no longer give one policy position to one audience, and a different policy position to an another. Ask any college student who has forgotten that his parents can see Facebook, too.
So how do you take advantage of the very real SEO benefits of blogs and social media content, without saying something you’ll regret? Here are four steps to help you get the best and avoid the worst.
1. Wait a day.
Your blog software has a “Draft” button. Use it.
Open up your blog software, type a few paragraphs, hit “Publish” and you’re done. Check off “write blog entry” from your GTD list. Easy! But not smart.
Instead, wait a day, read your draft again, and then publish. You might catch something that’s minor, like a confusing sentence or a misspelled word. Or you might prevent disaster, when you realize that you accidentally said something you (or your customers, your boss, your stockholders) will regret.
If you find that you can’t resist the instant gratification of the “Publish” button, write your blog entries in an offline application, like a word-processing program. That gives you the added bonus of having an archived copy of your bloggerific wisdom. This will come in handy someday, when you write your memoirs.
Waiting a day is the same advice that your English teacher gave you when you were in school, when he or she taught you the draft/review/revise process for good writing. Even if you were the kind of kid who compressed all those steps into one glorious sheet of notebook paper written on the bus, don’t do it now. You’re a grownup, and there’s revenue at stake.
2. Get a second opinion
“Um, buddy, you might want to re-think that comment about the boss’s nephew.”
Have someone else in your organization read your blog entry or Facebook content before you publish it. If you’re in a large organization, someone in the marketing/communications department is ideally suited for the task — they’re already steeped in company messaging, and know how to fix spelling mistakes.
If you’re in a smaller organization, trade with another content author, if there is one. In a pinch, any other pair of eyes is better than no review.
3. Develop and distribute a content policy
It’s like swimming-pool safety rules for your public image
The CEO of the company that I turned down had no idea what anyone said on their blogs — until our conversation, at least, his only interest in his employees’ content was whether or not it worked well for SEO. I’ve had clients that have never seen their own Facebook pages; they just know that someone on their staff maintains one.
Everyone’s pretty new new at navigating the waters of social media, so give your employees some guidelines, in the form of a content policy.
- Tell people what they should and should not say.
- Keep it short, sweet, and simple, so that it will actually be used. One page of guidelines, plus a few examples, will be more effective than a fat three-ring binder that governs every conceivable issue.
- Introduce it at a meeting, and give content authors a chance to ask questions.
- Post it on your company’s intranet, so that employees can find it easily.
- Revise as needed.
4. Define a content goal
Fill your website, white papers, and case study files — painlessly
Ask any kid, and they’ll tell you that the most dreaded essay assignment is the one where they’re told to write about anything they want. It’s too broad. It practically invites procrastination, rambling, and repetition.
Happily, there’s a cure: narrow the focus. When you do that for an organization’s content management, you double the value of your content with half the effort. Simply ask your content authors to write all or part of their content with a specific goal in mind.
- If you’re a service company, the goal can be to write about case studies. The blog has immediate interest, and you get a steady stream of case studies that you can add to your website or include in presentations.
- If you’re a consumer company, the goal can be to write a series of helpful or seasonal tips. After a few months, you have enough information for a booklet to hand out to customers.
- If you’re a nonprofit, the goal can be to write about current projects. You can later repurpose that information into material on your website or in your annual report.
- If you’re a manufacturer or software developer, the goal can be to develop content that can later be used in white papers. White papers are still valuable as offers to some audiences, but many companies dread the time and effort it takes to produce them. An engineer’s blog can give you a head start on that content.
Of course, all of this content will have to be edited and/or expanded to suit its new context, medium, and purpose. But with the right blog content, much of the work is already done. I’ve even known authors who use their blogs to draft their books one chapter at a time.
For more information about, and options for, creating and managing high-quality content, check out C3 Advertising’s Social Media Content Services.
