The other night I had a very disturbing dream. I must have fallen asleep thinking about e-marketing, as I often do, because I dreamt I had fallen asleep for five years, and woken up as an e-marketer in the summer of 2009. It was only five years later, but I couldn’t understand a word of what anyone was saying! It was as if they had had invented an entirely different language, full of strange made-up words and acronyms to describe the latest technology, the very same technology that I absolutely needed if I hoped to stay competitive in my field. Needless to say, back here in 2004, I woke up screaming, and then spent the rest of the night clutching my industry white papers.
Fortunately, I haven’t been asleep for the last five years, and by staying awake (and alert) I have managed, like everyone else, to keep up with things like CRM, webinars, CAN-SPAM, ASPs, and of course, blogs. As a matter of fact, I just learned a new buzzword for the kind of blogs you would be most interested in – b-blogs. These aren’t the kind of blogs you might associate with personal and political rantings. A b-blog is a business blog and is used to communicate timely and informative content to large groups such as partners, employees or teams within a company, or from one business to many other businesses.
But I don’t have a b-blog…do I?
Blogs are different from e-newsletters in many ways in that they use frequent, informal postings of content to keep the blog fresh and to keep people interested and informed. You’ll find that a blog and an e-newsletter will serve your business in different ways. For example, an e-newsletter might be an ideal way for you to touch your clients and prospects, whereas a blog allows you to communicate in a more timely fashion to your partners and resellers.
I know, you’re probably thinking business blog? But I don’t have a business blog! I’m on board with the whole e-newsletter thing, but…
Don’t panic. If you have an IMN e-newsletter, you’re a lot closer than you think to publishing a business blog. For one thing, it’s not all that different from an e-newsletter. Actually, because it’s less formal and you probably already have the content for it, you may be only a step or two away from publishing a blog. To show you what I mean, I’ll walk you through the components of an IMN DirectBlog account and describe how each step in the blogging process compares to the steps of creating an e-newsletter. I’ll also show you how you can link an e-newsletter account and a blog account together, so you can distribute your content through both channels without duplicating any of your work.
If you can do it with an e-newsletter, you can probably do it with a blog, too.
A blog account might look different, but when you look closely you’ll notice that practically everything you can do in an e-newsletter account is also available in a blog account. The major difference is that the blog account is highly focused on content management, whereas an e-newsletter account pays equal attention to content, layout, and delivery of email.
Major components of a DirectBlog account
Major components of an e-newsletter account
So what’s so different about a DirectBlog account if most of the functionality is the same? As you may have noticed, a DirectBlog account has content at its core. It gives you a quick, simple means to post your content, with much less focus on the design and email delivery aspects of the tool. To put it all in perspective, I’ll explain how each component works in a blogging scenario.
Content
Content is the most important aspect of a DirectBlog account because the intention of a blog is to send frequent, less formal communications. You can add new content in a DirectBlog account the same way you would in an e-newsletter, either by uploading a Microsoft Word document, copying and pasting your text or HTML, or composing the article online. With the simpler nature of a blog layout, content may be all that you need in your blog.
Once your subscribers become familiar with your blog, they will visit it often, looking for new postings. Consequently, you will want to add new content on a regular basis to your blog account. This way, subscribers can read your articles as they become available, rather than waiting for a weekly, monthly, or quarterly emailed newsletter.
Sharing content between your blog and your e-newsletter.
While your blog and your newsletter may have different audiences, each of the audiences may have common content interests. The IMN content management system makes it easy to share content between both of your accounts so you do not have to recreate content. You can simply link your DirectBlog to your e-newsletter account so when you add new content to your e-newsletter, you will be able to post the same information on your blog. To do this, you select the appropriate responses in the drop-down menus found on the Publishing Options menu. Then, in your blogging account, you will see a special content library representing the articles from your newsletter account that you have selected to share.
You’ll be able to browse the library and select whichever articles from your e-newsletter you’d like to use in your blog. This process will also work in reverse, if you want to publish articles from your blog in your e-newsletter.
Layout
The layout tools for your customized blog pages will work the same as the layout tools for your customized e-newsletter pages. As we mentioned above, your blog’s design will typically be simpler than that of your e-newsletter as it is more heavily focused on content.
You can, however, still customize your blog’s layout by changing colors, text styles, column, and page sizes. You can also add, edit move and remove elements of your blog page.
Web/Email Publishing
This is where one of the major differences occurs between a blog and an e-newsletter occurs. The most important part of publishing your blog is posting it to the web on a regular basis so your readers will be able to view new posts each time they visit your blog’s URL. While you don’t necessarily need to send out your blog as an email, emailing your blog is a good way to alert your subscribers to the fact that new content has been posted. Plus, in order for you to be able to identify which subscribers are reading your content, you will have to identify them at some point by sending them an email. So it is wise to include regular email notifications of new blog postings in your program.
Sharing subscribers with your e-newsletter account
If you choose to send your blog as email to a group of subscribers, you can either manage them within your DirectBlog account, or from within your e-newsletter account. Both the subscriber management and email distribution system work the same in blog and newsletter accounts. You’ll notice that if you have a blog and a newsletter linked together, you will be able to mail to subscriber lists in either account, from either account.
Reporting
If you send your blog out as an email, you will be able to see specifically which subscribers have viewed your blog and what articles they are interested in. You’ll also be able to view all the other analytics that you would normally see in the Activity Report for an e-newsletter. If your blog is going to exist purely as a web site, however, then your subscribers will be listed in the reports as “Unidentified Subscribers.”
When your blog account is linked to your e-newsletter account and you email your blog, you’ll be able to view the detailed data and analytics for both accounts together using the New Reporting and Analytics. This allows you to compare activity across the two accounts, right down to the behavior of individual subscribers. In other words, if John Doe has viewed certain items in your blog, and other articles in your e-newsletter, you’ll be able to view this data in the context of a single report.
So, are you ready to blog?
As you can see, creating a blog really isn’t all that different from creating an e-newsletter. As a matter of fact, if you already have an e-newsletter, you can take advantage of the work you’ve done to create your e-newsletter content by sharing that content with your blog. And the beauty is that you won’t need to learn a whole new skill set to set up your blog. Who knows – you might already be an expert blogger!
As always, if you have any questions, please email me.
