As more and more restaurants and brands begin to figure out social media, there are a lot of important questions to answer early on. I had a long, productive marketing meeting today with one of my clients, and the issue of where to situate their blog within their website came up. As of now, the blog was one of a number of “tabs” across the navigation bar. Needless to say it was not prominent and we quickly realized that people were not going to find the blog very easily, even if they specifically came to the site for it. (That is unless they were linked directly to it, from Twitter or Facebook for instance, but that’s for another post)
Now this client is beginning to blog quite often (3+ times a week) and sharing what I believe is unique, authentic, fun and useful content that should quickly garner a lot of interest. In fact, that was one of the reasons I went after and landed the client, because they had such a unique product and stunningly creative ideas which I was immediately able to see the positive social media consquences of.
As the conversation continued, I suddenly realized that for this particular client, and for my particular strategies, the blog simply had to be situated on the home page.
Blogging is Central to ANY Social Media Strategy
For those who do not know, blogging is the central part of my social media strategy. It is where a brand first begins to engage the social media space. It is where we first invite the web (including search engine crawlers) to see our property. As my clients build up their follower base across the social media spectrum, we want our friends, fans and followers to come to our site, read the blog, get to know the business, the people involved, why they do what they do, etc, and eventually become customers of our various services. Not rocket science, but using fantastic content has limitations when customers can’t get to the blog right?
So this goes back to the question of where should blogs be situated. Well, they should be situated on the home page. Yep, I’ve said it. I’m not the first to do so, but I am repeating the claim, only because I believe in it. I only pitch what I personally believe in.
Your blog should be on your front page
That is what I want to see when I visit your website. I’ll get to all the other information later, but first I want to see the blog. I want to see how its designed, who is writing for it, is the typography eye-catching or problematic. What software are you using? Is it WordPress? If so, what theme? (I hope its Thesis) If not, why not?
I want to see your social media links to Facebook, Twitter and wherever else a brand has decided to setup shop.
Blogging has applications in most businesses and blogging is so important that I don’t think I can really trust a brand that doesn’t have one.
Am I way off track here? If so, tear me to pieces in the comments…
Image Source: Annie Mole
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