No matter what, the very first piece of social media real estate I’d start with is a blog. – Chris Brogan
Blog About Everything Unrelated
United Blogs of Benetton is one of my very favorite blogs. It was one of my early inspirations when I started writing a multifamily industry related one back in 2005. The thing that struck me most about the blog is that it had absolutely nothing to do with their core business of fashion. In fact, I remember reading a post they wrote back around that time that suggested their reason for doing so.
I can’t find the post so I am doing my best to recall here. The gist was that they thought that the real value of blogging was to give the people that read it the essence of what they valued as an organization. In other words, they wanted to translate the values of their organization by way of compelling and worldly content.
Our First Company Related Blog
When we started our first company blog in 05′ we did just that. But in lieu of a forward facing, community gathering effort; we brought out the personality of EQRs Portland Portfolio. We called the blog: Portland Rocks Newsletter and the content consisted of stories about our teams. Be it work related or a personal experience we allowed just about everything.
Everything that is except for content about EQR or any specifically related to our apartment communities. Our chief aim back then was to invite people into relationship. Whether they bought from us or not was not the point of the blog. If they did, we considered it icing on the cake.
And, fathom this for a minute. It had nothing to do with SEO or SEM back then. Whoa!
It’s All About the Juice
Fast forward to today – everyone has a blog and everyone is jockeying for the first page of Google search. And, we all do it for Google Juice. We wrap it in 800 count Egyptian cotton [Read: adding value or enhancing experience].
All that being said, I agree 100% with Chris B.
AI: Start a blog today – if you have not already!
M
0 Responses
Good stuff as always, Mike. I’d assert that a blog serves many purposes beyond Google juice, which you allude to several times. For a business like yours, I think it’s tough to not blog about your business and still get value out of the site, unless you view it as an opportunity to create a relationship with a new audience. I just had this conversation last week … you might not necessarily want your blog to rank for a term like “apartments in st. louis,” but rather “things to do in st. louis.” Knowing who you’re blogging for is just as important as knowing why you’re blogging in the first place.