As a tool that businesses use to build online communities, provide customer value and establish their leadership and domain expertise, business-branded blogs have become a de facto prerequisite for successful online brand promotion.
In addition to the obvious benefits of blogging as a sales tool, there are several other strong reasons to promote your brand using your blog:
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Publishing fresh brand content can increase your site's ranking in search results which is a powerful means to stand out against your competitors.
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Brand promotion through blogging allows you to reach existing and new customers inexpensively.
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Blogging creates an archive of useful brand-based information which can be searched by prospects and leveraged internally for other marketing purposes.
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Exceptional content with strong sharing potential can reach a large audience that other marketing efforts may not have convenient access to.
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Brand blogging creates a persistent online footprint which can be accessed indefinitely via search engines.
Consider modeling the success generated by the brand blogging patterns of these 5 businesses to reap the benefits of brand-themed blogging:
- Marriott
The posts on Marriott's highly successful Marriott on the Move blog is authored by CEO, Bill Marriott. Possessing a wide range of expertise, the blog posts mix Mr. Marriott's personal knowledge and interests with a passion for the Marriott Hotel brand.
In a recent post entitled “Made in America,” Bill Marriott discusses his business decision to replace all of the hotel chain's 8 million bath and hand towels with high quality cotton towels, that will specify on their tags that they are “Made in USA.”
In trademark Marriott brilliance, he ties the towel replacement decision with the eco-friendly consequences of reducing ocean-going container shipments by 300 each year, which at the same time results in a reduction of greenhouse gases.
Feeding into the wider public interests associated with purchasing domestically created products and growing environmental concerns, the Marriott Hotel brand comes out a winning partner by this business blog topic decision.
- Walt Disney Theme Parks
The Disney Parks blog creates a powerful and enticing sales tool for the Disney Theme Park experience and brand.
The topics menu of their successful blog covers 10 aspects of their resorts and amusement parks surveying their customers' interests on issues ranging from dining, merchandise, vacation planning, park history and even a section devoted to celebrity visits of their parks.
The blog introduces the authors, providing a photo, their background and their role at the park, promoting a personalized sense to the individualized experience that the Disney brand is known for, tying in the business stakeholders with their brand promotion.
- Whole Foods Market
Promoting product facts and use, the Whole Foods blog showcases their brand's appeal – natural food products and healthy eating.
The blog mixes videos and images with written content to explore their food products' use and related facts of interest and value to their customers..
In a piece entitled “All About Lamb, the Whole Foods blogger demonstrates, step by step, how to season and dress a leg of lamb with mint salsa verde – all items are available from Whole Foods. Supporting the video's theme is a bulleted list featuring descriptions of the various cuts of lamb the store sells with high level cooking instructions for each, resulting in an innovative non-threatening product promotion.
- General Electric
In a highly successful brand campaign to show that they are more than just a light bulb producing company, General Electric's blog posts showcase the company's inventiveness across a wide range of technological and energy offerings.
For instance, the “Industries” link on their blog loads a page of buttons listing various industries. Each button leads to other more detailed web pages exploring the company's contributions in improving industries as diverse as aviation, healthcare, oil and gas, mining, retail and transportation.
Their “Digital” link in the main menu opens a page that allows businesses to access software to help streamline their energy use and other operational efficiencies.
Both uses of their blog create powerful, memorable and useful brand enhancing content.
- Red Cross
Increasing public awareness of the several services that they offer, the Red Cross Chat blog features inspirational stories from blood donors and news posts related to their disaster recovery, services to military personnel and health and safety offerings, designed to raise public involvement in their emergency and disaster campaigns. They even explain to their web visitors how to contribute by vehicle donations.
Building on the brand awareness efforts, their blog features links to Red Cross Store merchandise which offer Red Cross-branded emergency supplies and education books and videos.
Parting Thoughts
Online business promotion has come a long way from a company website with static content that rarely, if ever was updated. Today's businesses compete on the Internet using content in a variety of forms such as video, image and text-based content on blogs.
This article presented 5 successful blog campaigns which can serve as successful and exemplary inspiration, whose examples businesses new to blogging should consider mode.
