How To Leverage Your Blog Content in Other Media (and Vice-Versa): Special Guest Post by Susan Young

Today, friend and fellow blogger Susan Young and I are exchanging guest blog posts. Susan is president of AimFire Marketing, an Indianapolis marketing consultant specializing in websites, copywriting, PR, search engine optimization and Internet marketing.

SUSAN:

Many businesses now see the value of incorporating blogging into their online marketing and communication strategy. However, companies that integrate their blogging efforts with their other marketing and advertising tactics will have a greater impact.  Here are a few ideas:

Your Company Website: Make sure your website includes a prominent link to your blog on every page. This will not only provide your website visitors with fresh, interesting and educational content, but you’ll boost your website’s search engine optimization efforts too. Many companies are actually developing their websites using blogging platforms such as WordPress to seamlessly integrate their company blog with their website.

Your Social Media Accounts: If you are offering valuable content to your prospects and customers via your blog, you should also share this information via your social media sites, such as your Facebook fan page, your LinkedIn company page and your Twitter account. This will give more people the opportunity to read your blog posts and thus become exposed to your company and its products or services. If you don’t have time to spend communicating on social media, you can hire a social media marketing firm to post updates for your business for a nominal monthly fee.

Your eNewsletter: A weekly or monthly eNewsletter is a great way to reach a broader audience, while leveraging your existing blog content. And the best part? You’ve already got the content for your newsletter within your blog posts. Provide a sign-up form on your website, and include a brief intro, closing and special offer, in addition to a paragraph preview of one or two blog posts, and you have a personalized eNewsletter to send to prospects, partners and colleagues. Again, a marketing firm can assist you with setting this up and sending it out if needed.

Your Press Releases: If your company currently has a PR firm or an in-house PR effort, consider posting your press releases on your blog to expose your message to your blog audience. Alternatively, you could re-purpose information from your press release into a blog post to make it more conversational or personal.

Your Case Studies and Testimonials: If you are currently using case studies or testimonials as sales material, these are great topics for future blog posts. Or if you have posted a customer success story on your blog, format this into a printed piece to use in your sales and marketing kit, or as part of your print literature.

Advertising and Direct Marketing: Share your most recent ad campaign in an upcoming blog post to solicit feedback. Use content from a recent blog post in a direct mail piece, or vice-versa. Often the headlines and copy that you would consider for your ad campaigns would make great blog titles and content for your blog post. It’s all about positioning you and your company as an expert in your field through the creation and use of valuable content, sprinkled with a few marketing messages.

Having a consistent message across your blog, website and other media will ensure that you have a cohesive marketing effort. Now you have some ideas for leveraging your blog content across other media. Implement a few of these suggestions, and you will save your company valuable time and resources, while ensuring your message gets heard.

Thank you, Susan, for such a thorough discussion of all the ways to build business through social media along with corporate blogging for business. In corporate blogging training, as a matter of fact, I need to stress the importance of blog content writers leveraging their efforts with other social media. Any business’ marketing strategy and tactics development needs to incorporate more than one vehicle. Writing for business is the perfect jumping-off point, from where to gain exposure in all these different ways.