blogging as a tool for growth
TRANSCRIPT
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Investor at dunnhumby Ventures (dhV), the investment arm of dunnhumby. Prior
to my work at dunnhumby, I was the founder of the content marketing firm WaterMyBlog and am a frequent writer on subject of startups, venture capital, and design thinking. You can follow me
on Twitter @kfugere
Bio
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Identify a repeatable process for
generating and disseminating great
content.
GOAL
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STEP 1
What Problem are you Solving? When your potential customers
are trying to solve this problem, what are they typing here?
Understand Your (Potential) Audience
TaskWrite down 5-10 searches a client might perform when looking to solve the particular problem you solve!
Example: Blue ApronThe Obvious
“Meal delivery service”
The Less Obvious “Dinner ideas for two”P
ress
Rel
ease
Blo
g P
ost
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STEP 2 Identify Your Target Platform
Blogging isn’t reserved solely for your “Blog” Editorials (Big & Broad) Guest Blogs (Highly Targeted) MyWebsite.com/blog (High
Quality)
Task 1Google - “(Publication) op-ed guidelines”
Start a spreadsheet and track the email address and format for each publication. Try to get to 20.
Task 2Start a spreadsheet of industry related blogs that potential clients might read.
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STEP 2 Identify Your Target Platform
Case Study: Founder of Buffer acquired 100,000 customers via an aggressive guest
blogging strategy before writing anything for their own blog.
Hi guys,As a guy just starting out with a few basic webdesign lessons, I found onextrapixel extremely helpful, so just a quick thank you on that note.
I wanted to ask if you are interested in a guest post that I have drafted, which I titled "10 Tools To Make The Most of Twitter". It covers a few of the latest Twitter Tools, which help me a lot to stay productive.
I hope you can let me know if you think the post could be interesting for you. For reference of my writing style, I published recently on:Six Revisions SocialMediaExaminer Inspiredm
Best, Leo
http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2194396/how-guest-posting-propelled-one-site-from-0-to-100-000-customers#
Cont.
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STEP 3 Display Thought Leadership
Don’t be Afraid to Have an Opinion!! You know more about your industry
than most people and need to remove the fear of being criticized.
Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn't exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.- John Steinbeck
http://lifehacker.com/focus-on-an-audience-of-one-to-avoid-creative-fear-1582679569
“
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STEP 4 Identify & Duplicate Proven Strategies
TaskCome up with 10 lists related to your industry that could be the basis for an article.
Be creative!
Example:The Periodic Table of Venture Capital Blogshttps://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital-blogs-periodic-table/
1 million most-shared articles during the first half of 2014.
http://marketingland.com/heres-2-7-billion-social-shares-say-state-online-publishing-99572?utm_content=bufferd8519&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
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STEP 5 Optimize Your Headline!
Simplicity: If you are vague about the value of reading your copy, your reader will be too.
Helpfulness: For your reader to see value in your copy, you must show how it will help him.
Immediacy: Your headline should be so interesting that your reader cannot help but read on immediately.
Newsworthiness: Your headline must say something he hasn’t heard before.
Entertainment: Headlines which promise some entertainment in the copy succeed more often than those which don’t.
TaskCome up with a Headline for each article topic you created in Step 4.
Suggestion:Usability research shows that people tend to take in only the first and last 3 words. This suggests the perfect length for a headline is 6 words.
MUST READ: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/how-to-write-headlines/
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STEP 6 Optimize Your Body Content
How Long Should My Post Be? The ideal length of a blog post is 7 minutes, 1,600 words
https://medium.com/data-lab/the-optimal-post-is-7-minutes-74b9f41509b
https://moz.com/blog/what-makes-a-link-worthy-post-part-1
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STEP 6 Optimize Your Body Content
Content + Media
https://moz.com/blog/what-makes-a-link-worthy-post-part-1 https://blog.bufferapp.com/the-power-of-twitters-new-expanded-images-and-how-to-make-the-most-of-it
Cont.
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STEP 6 Optimize Your Body Content
Resources: 53 Free Image Resources! Adding Text to Images Best Practices for Marrying Text an
d Images The Ideal Length of Everything! What headlines and topics yield th
e most social shares
How to Write a Headline
Cont.
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STEP 7 Implement Your Plan
-REPEAT-
Plan: Target to customer Write a post from your list of
topics Write a killer headline Add some media Start sending to Publishers,
industry specific blogs, or publish to your Website