A recently posted blog gave those of us involved in marketing and communications the following advice: Between developing your brand or starting a blog, you should choose the blog and figure out the branding later. The blog went on to say that online, content is king, so it’s important to create content every day, even if you continue to work out your messaging on your blog until you get it right.
Wow! What a recipe for disaster! Creating content while you figure out your messaging is like getting in your car without any clear idea how to get somewhere. Even worse, what impression does it give the person reading your blog? I would guess it’s like those experiences at a party where you get into a conversation with someone who loves to hear himself talk. You know the type. He starts to talk before he knows what he wants to say, babbling on until eventually getting to some point. How impressed were you with this person once you were able to extricate yourself from his clutches?
Content is king — online and everywhere else. It always has been. But lately, that belief has been modified by some who believe that online “a large quantity of content is king” even at the expense of quality. I don’t subscribe to that theory. More quantity may draw people to you through search engines, but what impression will they have of you once they’ve been there?
To go back to the blog’s initial premise — should you develop your brand or write a blog first? Well, to answer that, let’s be clear what a brand is. At its simplest, a brand is the image of a company or product in the market. But it’s also deeper than that. It’s a core set of principles and beliefs — communicated through words, images, and actions — that leaves an impression of who you are. So it’s really not an either/or argument because whether or not you formally develop your brand, you create an impression. Which begs the question: what kind of impression do you want people to have — one where they clearly understand your core principles and what you have to offer, or one that gives the impression that you’re a company trying to figure it out as you go?
A recently posted blog gave those of us involved in marketing and communications the following advice: Between developing your brand or starting a blog, you should choose the blog and figure out the branding later. The blog went on to say that online, content is king, so it’s important to create content every day, even if you continue to work out your messaging on your blog until you get it right.
Wow! What a recipe for disaster! Creating content while you figure out your messaging is like getting in your car without any clear idea how to get somewhere. Even worse, what impression does it give the person reading your blog? I would guess it’s like those experiences at a party where you get into a conversation with someone who loves to hear himself talk. You know the type. He starts to talk before he knows what he wants to say, babbling on until eventually getting to some point. How impressed were you with this person once you were able to extricate yourself from his clutches?
Content is king — online and everywhere else. It always has been. But lately, that belief has been modified by some who believe that online “a large quantity of content is king” even at the expense of quality. I don’t subscribe to that theory. More quantity may draw people to you through search engines, but what impression will they have of you once they’ve been there?
To go back to the blog’s initial premise — should you develop your brand or write a blog first? Well, to answer that, let’s be clear what a brand is. At its simplest, a brand is the image of a company or product in the market. But it’s also deeper than that. It’s a core set of principles and beliefs — communicated through words, images, and actions — that leaves an impression of who you are. So it’s really not an either/or argument because whether or not you formally develop your brand, you create an impression. Which begs the question: what kind of impression do you want people to have — one where they clearly understand your core principles and what you have to offer, or one that gives the impression that you’re a company trying to figure it out as you go?
