Month: January 2021

What does a successful corporate blog entail? In the first and second installments of our three-part series on blogging, we analyzed the potential benefits and challenges of starting and maintaining a business blog.

If, after reading the two previous blog posts, you believe that the pros of content marketing outweigh the cons and are leaning toward a corporate blog as the right choice for your business, then read on for tips and examples of putting together a successful blog.

A Successful Business Blog Starts With a Clear Purpose

As mentioned in the first installment, 4 Benefits of Having a Business Blog, the core advantages of having a corporate blog are flexibility, connection, ownership, and authority. To reap these benefits, it is critical for your company to develop a corporate blog that provides consistent content that readers find interesting and that aligns with your company’s objectives.

How can you do this? The first step is to determine your blog’s core purpose.

A corporate blog can help you promote and fulfill your company’s mission, such as increasing brand awareness, generating sales and revenue, or sharing knowledge on a matter that your business is passionate about. It can help you solidify your brand and demonstrate your expertise. 

Once your blog’s primary purpose is established, you can more easily determine your target audience and create content that provides value for that audience. In doing so, your corporate blog will help you cut through the noise in a world overloaded with marketing content. You will be able to nurture and build lasting relationships with your readers, and if done correctly, your audience will be more likely to think of your brand and promote it via word-of-mouth marketing. 

At Sparx Publishing Group, for example, we generate content that not only brings value to our audiences but also stays true to our mission of creating “content to make the world better.” 

Our blog’s core purpose is to “amplify better” by using our platform to showcase stories of individuals and organizations (including ourselves) working to make the world better. 

Sparx provides tips for fellow marketers, raises awareness for important causes, and brings interesting topics of discussion to light. The content on our blog is an important vehicle for connecting to our readers and making a positive impact on the world.

Three Examples of Successful Business Blogs 

Today, there are many great examples of successful blogs to emulate. Three examples that Sparx finds particularly interesting are from IBM, Seth Godin, and Garth Turner – all of which help make the world better by providing readers with valuable information that they can use to improve both their professional and personal lives. 

IBM, also known as the International Business Machines Corporation, is a multinational technology and management consulting company that is committed to “creating innovations that matter for the world.” IBM highlights their thought leadership with a catalogue of blogs on various topics catering to a wide range of clients from different communities, including software, social, cloud, business, and more. The depth and variety of blogs showcase the breadth of their technology expertise, and cements their reputation as a trusted thought leader in the consulting space. One great example, the Watson Blog, demonstrates their proprietary, cutting-edge AI platform and the ways IBM’s innovations are shaping the current business landscape. By sharing knowledge through their blogs, IBM is also able to encourage forward-thinking change in society, which helps meet their mission of creating a “smarter planet.”

Seth Godin is an American best-selling author, entrepreneur, and speaker who has launched “one of the most popular blogs in the world.” His blog, seths.blog, shares his wealth of knowledge from the worlds of marketing and business, providing helpful insights and tips for his readers. 

What makes this blog stand out? Godin brings value to his audiences by sharing content that is unconventional, or even weird. His blog is a “purple cow,” which is “a term he popularized that describes ‘something phenomenal, something counterintuitive and exciting and flat out unbelievable.’” Importantly, Godin is able to consistently create and share posts every day, which provides readers with a reason to come back regularly to stay connected to Godin’s content and business endeavours.

Another successful business blog example is GreaterFool.ca, a blog by the Honourable J. Garth Turner. A former member of the Canadian House of Commons, Turner is a Canadian business journalist, best-selling author, entrepreneur, financial advisor, and speaker. The Greater Fool blog shares Turner’s wisdom on economics, real estate, and finance, as well as his perspectives on current events. Like Godin’s blog, Turner’s captures attention from a well-established niche audience with a consistent schedule (he posts almost daily) and content that is of great value and interest to his readers. The success of this blog has in turn helped generate exposure, revenue and new clients for Turner’s investment business, Turner Investments.

Other Ways to Elevate Your Business  

While business blogs are a great way to enhance most businesses, maintaining a blog might not be the right choice for every company. As outlined in the second installment of this series, 4 Reasons a Company Blog Might Be Wrong for Your Business, the drawbacks of maintaining a corporate blog are commitment, continuity, competition, and cost.

If your company does not have the resources to start and maintain a consistent blog, you can allocate your resources toward alternative strategies and tools for sustaining your business. 

For instance, you can focus your efforts on sharing content through social media channels, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, or Pinterest. By using social media, your brand can capture readers’ attention without exerting the same time and energy that is needed to research and write longer blog articles. Social media provides quick snippets of quality content that are easily digestible for readers – in fact, “Twitter originally billed itself as a ‘microblogging service’” – and is also an efficient way to engage with your audience.

Other ways you can elevate your business without a blog include email newsletters and paid Google advertisements. Newsletters provide your stakeholders with up-to-date announcements without the pressure of a high publishing cadence, while paid media ads on Google can help you attract new potential clients and customers.   

Sparx Publishing Group Can Help With Your Business Blog

No matter which digital communication tool you choose for connecting with your audience – whether it be a business blog or otherwise – these tools are important for the success of your brand and are invaluable to helping you promote your company’s purpose.

If you need help starting, planning or managing an effective corporate blog, or if you have any other content marketing inquiries, contact Sparx Publishing Group today – we’d be more than happy to help! You can reach us here. 

Whether you’re thriving in your career or feeling a little stuck, it helps to look to those who have forged their own path in new and innovative ways. These three marketing thought leaders are sure to spark inspiration.

Seth Godin

To see marketing through a new lens, seek out the work of Seth Godin. The entrepreneur and author has a unique perspective on marketing and its purpose. And he shares that information through 20 best-selling books and a widely read blog that has been updated daily for over a decade (that’s more than 7,000 posts, for those keeping count). He’s known for pioneering ideas such as permission marketing, which directly challenges the more common interruption marketing that overloads consumers with ads.

To Godin, marketing often boils down to a story to tell or problem to be solved. He uses as an example a problem he encountered during a trip to India with VisionSpring, which sells affordable glasses in developing countries. He noticed that only a third of those who tried on glasses proceeded to buy them. Why was that? Those trying on glasses needed them, and the price was within reach. So he reframed (no pun intended) the challenge and instead handed people their new glasses and said, “If they work and you like them, please pay us three dollars. If you don’t, give them back.” The result? Sales doubled, simply by changing the scenario from paying to have something to paying to keep it. And in doing so, they helped twice as many people see clearly.

Another Way Seth Godin Is Making the World Better

Godin believes in working to fix systemic problems, not just to address emergencies. He’s written and spoken about the need for nonprofits to challenge the status quo and to embrace failure as an unavoidable part of innovation.

Simon Sinek

If you want to be inspired, look no further than author and motivational speaker Simon Sinek. He describes himself as an “unshakable optimist” and has made a career of motivating both leaders and organizations. Sinek may be best known for his 2009 TEDx talk How Great Leaders Inspire Action. It’s the second-most-watched TED talk of all time (no big deal), with over 53 million views. During his talk, he explains how the best leaders are able to articulate the “why” of what they do.

Interestingly, that talk led him to new ideas on trust – ideas that became more concrete following a trip to a military base in Afghanistan, where he was bumped from his flight and had no idea when he might get home. At first he panicked, but then he realized his reaction was like a selfish boss, more concerned with himself than others. When he finally was able to fly home, in the belly of a cargo plane, he shared the trip with the flag-draped casket of a fallen soldier. He called that experience an honour, and it solidified his thoughts on trust – not just through actions, but through environment, too – which eventually became a book, Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t, and another TED talk that, you guessed it, has been viewed millions of times.

In short, Sinek wants us to find our dream job – one that inspires us, makes us feel safe, and has incredible leadership at its core. 

Another Way Simon Sinek Is Making the World Better

An eternal optimist who has helped the leaders of countless companies to be better at leading, Sinek is also active in the nonprofit world, which he prefers to call the for-impact world.

Marie Forleo

When Oprah herself dubs someone a thought leader, we sit up and take notice. That’s why we can’t help but pay attention to best-selling author and entrepreneur Marie Forleo. Her goal is to inspire others to find fulfillment through her books such as Everything is Figureoutable, YouTube web series MarieTV, podcast, and online business school.

Her trajectory was an indirect route: She waited tables, cleaned toilets, worked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and was even one of the world’s first Nike Elite Dance Athletes before she discovered her niche. So how did she end up founding one of Inc.’s 500 fastest-growing companies? Well, if you asked her, she’d tell you this: optimism. It’s an outlook that helped lift the self-made millionaire out of debt and turned her into a global brand that inspires many. Oh, and earned her a nod of approval from none other than Oprah Winfrey.

For Forleo, optimism isn’t about sugar-coating, it’s about asking, “What’s next?” That’s what makes the obstacles we face “figureoutable.”

Another Way Marie Forleo Is Making the World Better

Forleo is actively involved with an array of nonprofit organizations, including Charity: Water, Malala Fund, and Kiva.

Find More Inspiration

If you have any inquiries about content marketing, or you would like to discuss how your company can inspire others through your own marketing efforts, feel free to reach out to Sparx Publishing Group here.