I had a client email me today asking for my opinion on the tone a blog should take and the length of the posts. Two very tactical questions. The problem is, we have never discussed the purpose of the blog. You will hear me ask this over and over again... Why? We need to know the why long before we ask questions of how it should sound and how long should it be. Below is my quick email response back to the client.
For me, the tone question needs to come AFTER the first question… what is the PURPOSE/MISSION of the blog… in as brief a definition as you can provide.
If the mission is to inform readers about the summit and thought leadership… that has a definitive slant toward the tone.
If the mission is to convince visitors that they MUST sign up today… well, then the tone is different.
So my input is provide some clarity on the mission first, then the tone answer will quickly follow. I often find that my clients refuse to offer the truth [or just hesitate to say it out loud] when it comes to these types of tactical deployments [meaning blogs]…
My transition statement from tone to length is this… I can without a doubt ensure you of one very important FACT… if you don’t give your readers anything, you will get nothing in return! You ALWAYS have to give to get [reference tone statements above, once you identify what you want to GET, you can focus on what you need to GIVE to get it]
So, how “LONG” do we want to GIVE to GET what we want? Let’s ask a couple other questions…
- what do our readers want from us?
- What do our readers look like? [mostly not in a physical sense, but a picture is helpful sometimes]
- This will lead us closer to what they want from us.
- Based on what they want, and who they are… how much time do they have to read what we want to give them?
We have to know the visitor… PERIOD
Step Back one Giant Step now… how are we going to get the visitor?
Rinse and repeat J [meaning go back to the top of this email and ask all the questions again]
In a perfect world… the blog would offer an ongoing glimpse into what makes an event like the Resource Planning Summit and ASSET to the attendees. It would mirror the style and content of the dynamic speakers brought to present. It would provide excellent resource [in the form of pointing toward resources] that will help influence readers to attend the summit. It would strike a balance between deeply informative posts with quick ‘hey, I know your time is important, but I really think you should subscribe to this industry specific newsletter that is this that and the other [and oh yeah, it promotes one of our speakers]’
Then you evaluate analytics and see for yourself which posts speak best to your audience.
Rinse and repeat – your mileage may vary.
Blogging, social media and transactional websites are all about creating a hypothesis [sell more widgets] testing, measuring, changing the hypothesis, testing, measuring, and reporting your findings.
Love to hear other thoughts on this one.