What Iām actually talking about today is what Iāve titled: āBurn your blogā, which may sound slightly counter intuitive ā given that Iām the Head of Content and a lot of time we work on our companiesā blogs, our clientsā blogs ā but I think itās time that all of our clients should burn their blogs. Not just burn it. Kill it, tear it in half, take it out the back of the office, shoot it in the head, do whatever you have to do.
Now, Iām going to explain to you why. Who has a drawer like this in their kitchen? Yep. This is a drawer in my kitchen. We call it the miscellaneous drawer. Within the miscellaneous drawer, we have a whole bunch of different drugs ā legal; scissors. We still have ā I actually went through the drawer in preparation for this ā we still have the instructional manual for our kettle, and I donāt know why because the kettle only has one button, but there we go. Tape measure, sticky tape. We actually have twine, we donāt have a garden. Thereās a lot of weird stuff in there.
You can see why these kinds of things happen in a kitchen, because you have a very regimented structure of your kitchen. You have a cupboard in which your plates go, you have a cupboard in which your saucepans go, you have a drawer in which your cutlery goes. Everythingās sorted out, but if thereās other stuff that doesnāt fit naturally in one of those places, you go: āYeah, weāll put it in there, weāll forget about itā. When thereās something that you need that doesnāt quite fit into one of those other categorisations you say: āItās probably in that drawer, thereā.
Actually, you can see this kind of behaviour in a lot of other places with humans. If you think about Chinese takeaway menus, for example, youāve got Szechuan dishes, chow mein dishes, and then right at the bottom corner youāve got sundries, and itāll be like chips and curry sauce, and all that sort of stuff. Theyāll go there because they donāt belong in any of the other categories. Actually, I think the dictionary definition of sundries is something like āitems which arenāt important enough to have their own categoryā, or something like that.
Thereās also actually, do you know the Dewey decimal system? Which is the numbered system used to organise books in libraries, and itās designed to be an indexing system for all of the knowledge in the world, but each section within the Dewey decimal system has a section for miscellaneous. So, even whatās generally considered to be the best categorisation system of knowledge for humans has loads of buckets in which you can put stuff that doesnāt fit anywhere else.
You can also see this kind of behaviour in web design and digital marketing. If we look at, for example, bitly. We all use bitly every day. They have a couple of different menu items there; if something doesnāt particularly fit into one of those menu categorisations where do you think theyāre going to put it? On the blog.
Similarly, MailChimp. We all use Mail Chimp every day. Features, pricing, support ā very clear, very concise. If something doesnāt fit into one of those, whack it on the blog.
WordPress, we all use that, many, many times a day. Very concise menu items down there. If something doesnāt fit into one of those menu items, weāll probably throw it on the blog. These are three of the worldās biggest digital services. I would say thereās probably not a day that goes by that I donāt use all three of these. Theyāre some of the biggest websites in the world.
If you take a look at their blogs, we look at Bitlyās blog, weāve got a couple of different things on there. Weāve got a product feature type item, weāve got a case study, and weāve got āhow toā type stuff ā thereās a real mix of content going on in there. If we look at the MailChimp blog, itās about their internal machinations, kind of an inside baseball type feature. If we look at the Word Press blog, itās just release notes.
What weāre actually doing is, three menu items with identical names on three of the biggest websites in the world, and weāre providing three completely different experiences for users. Again, you can see how people ended up there, because theyāre creating these things for a website ā and in any business thereās going to be internal pressure to build new things for the website and they have to go somewhere ā so people ask themselves this question: āDoes this have a logical home on any website?ā If itās a new product, itāll go with all the products item on their menu. If itās a support item, a how-to, itāll go on the support section. But if it doesnāt, they say: āNo, it doesnāt actually have a logical home, letās put it on the blog. Itāll probably fit there.ā This results in an incredibly confusing experience for users.
Not only that, if you look at actually Googleās SEO starter guide, they kind of tell you not to do this. They have a line that says: āYou have to stay organised around a topic, and you should avoid dumping large amounts of text on various topics onto a single pageā. Weāre creating a confusing experience for users, but weāre also creating a confusing experience for search engines. Really, weāre helping nobody by having these blogs that weāre just treating as areas where everything else goes. What weāve been working really hard with our clients to do is to put some kind of topic, or purpose, or mission statement behind their blog. Actually, give it a name, and give it an editorial identity so people know what goes on there.
I just wanted to give you a few examples of companies that are doing this really well at the moment. I donāt know if any of you have read GE reports? GE, General Electric, the company founded by, I think it was Thomas Edison. Been around for donkeyās years, been involved in everything from jet engines to light bulbs, theyāre massive. They have this website that basically tells stories from within GE and all the amazing things that their technologyās doing. Theyāve given themselves the mission statement of: āGE reports the daily news, video, and social media hub covering GEās transformation into the worldās largest digital industrial companyā. That is a really, really clear mission statement, and theyāve got a really clear editorial identity, so they know exactly what goes in there. If somebody from another department in GE comes along and says: āWeāve got this new kind of energy efficient light bulb that we need to sell,ā they can say: āWell it doesnāt belong here. Go away!ā
Similarly, I donāt know if any of you have heard of Piano? Who are a company who make a sort of content gating software type thing. Theyāve created this thing called Traffic Magazine. I definitely recommend you go and check it out and read it, itās really high quality stuff. What they say itās all about is: āTraffic Magazine uses the tools of journalism to examine the media itself, to analyse the industry as it reinvents itself in the digital ageā. They have some really, really fascinating articles on there, and theyāve given themselves a purpose. Itās really, really excellent.
Of course, the other company thatās kind of moved this direction is Google themselves. They, a few months ago, launched this new area called The Keyword. I think they had 19 or 20 company blogs before, theyāve amalgamated them all into one. The URL for this, theyāre using their own branded top level domain name, so itās blog.google, which is quite indulgent, but I suppose when you have that much money you can do what you want. Theyāve said their purpose for the Keyword is: āTo make it easier for you to find Googleās official word on any given topicā, which may sound quite mundane, but actually when you think about it, in an industry like ours sometimes it can be quite hard to find Googleās official word on something, because a lot of people are repeating something that they heard second hand at a conference four years ago. Having a centralised resource where we can go and discover what Googleās opinion is on any topic, is really, really useful.
The interesting thing with a lot of these places is theyāre actually run by publishing people. GE reports, they actually hired a journalist ā I think his name is Thomas Kellner ā he worked at Forbes for about eight years. They hired him to basically be an investigative reporter within the company and find all these stories and write about them. Similarly, with Traffic Magazine, thatās run by a guy who wrote for Politico and Dish previously.
These are all people with backgrounds in this kind of storytelling. If you want to be telling stories about your company, who better to do that than a natural storyteller? This is, I think, a fantastic direction to move in. Itās one weāre trying to move all our clients towards. And thatās me.