Marketing
What Iâm actually talking about today is what Iâve titled: âBurn your blogâ, which may sound slightly counter intuitive â given that Iâm the Head of Content and a lot of time we work on our companiesâ blogs, our clientsâ blogs â but I think itâs 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, Iâm 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 â legal; scissors. We still have â I actually went through the drawer in preparation for this â we still have the instructional manual for our kettle, and I donât know why because the kettle only has one button, but there we go. Tape measure, sticky tape. We actually have twine, we donât have a garden. Thereâs 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. Everythingâs sorted out, but if thereâs other stuff that doesnât fit naturally in one of those places, you go: âYeah, weâll put it in there, weâll forget about itâ. When thereâs something that you need that doesnât quite fit into one of those other categorisations you say: âItâs probably in that drawer, thereâ.
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, youâve got Szechuan dishes, chow mein dishes, and then right at the bottom corner youâve got sundries, and itâll be like chips and curry sauce, and all that sort of stuff. Theyâll go there because they donât belong in any of the other categories. Actually, I think the dictionary definition of sundries is something like âitems which arenât important enough to have their own categoryâ, or something like that.
Thereâs also actually, do you know the Dewey decimal system? Which is the numbered system used to organise books in libraries, and itâs 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 whatâs generally considered to be the best categorisation system of knowledge for humans has loads of buckets in which you can put stuff that doesnât 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 doesnât particularly fit into one of those menu categorisations where do you think theyâre going to put it? On the blog.
Similarly, MailChimp. We all use Mail Chimp every day. Features, pricing, support â very clear, very concise. If something doesnât 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 doesnât fit into one of those menu items, weâll probably throw it on the blog. These are three of the worldâs biggest digital services. I would say thereâs probably not a day that goes by that I donât use all three of these. Theyâre some of the biggest websites in the world.
If you take a look at their blogs, we look at Bitlyâs blog, weâve got a couple of different things on there. Weâve got a product feature type item, weâve got a case study, and weâve got âhow toâ type stuff â thereâs a real mix of content going on in there. If we look at the MailChimp blog, itâs about their internal machinations, kind of an inside baseball type feature. If we look at the Word Press blog, itâs just release notes.
What weâre actually doing is, three menu items with identical names on three of the biggest websites in the world, and weâre providing three completely different experiences for users. Again, you can see how people ended up there, because theyâre creating these things for a website â and in any business thereâs going to be internal pressure to build new things for the website and they have to go somewhere â so people ask themselves this question: âDoes this have a logical home on any website?â If itâs a new product, itâll go with all the products item on their menu. If itâs a support item, a how-to, itâll go on the support section. But if it doesnât, they say: âNo, it doesnât actually have a logical home, letâs put it on the blog. Itâll probably fit there.â This results in an incredibly confusing experience for users.
Not only that, if you look at actually Googleâs SEO starter guide, they kind of tell you not to do this. They have a line that says: âYou have to stay organised around a topic, and you should avoid dumping large amounts of text on various topics onto a single pageâ. Weâre creating a confusing experience for users, but weâre also creating a confusing experience for search engines. Really, weâre helping nobody by having these blogs that weâre just treating as areas where everything else goes. What weâve 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 donât 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 donkeyâs years, been involved in everything from jet engines to light bulbs, theyâre massive. They have this website that basically tells stories from within GE and all the amazing things that their technologyâs doing. Theyâve given themselves the mission statement of: âGE reports the daily news, video, and social media hub covering GEâs transformation into the worldâs largest digital industrial companyâ. That is a really, really clear mission statement, and theyâve 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: âWeâve got this new kind of energy efficient light bulb that we need to sell,â they can say: âWell it doesnât belong here. Go away!â
Similarly, I donât know if any of you have heard of Piano? Who are a company who make a sort of content gating software type thing. Theyâve created this thing called Traffic Magazine. I definitely recommend you go and check it out and read it, itâs really high quality stuff. What they say itâs all about is: âTraffic Magazine uses the tools of journalism to examine the media itself, to analyse the industry as it reinvents itself in the digital ageâ. They have some really, really fascinating articles on there, and theyâve given themselves a purpose. Itâs really, really excellent.
Of course, the other company thatâs 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, theyâve amalgamated them all into one. The URL for this, theyâre using their own branded top level domain name, so itâs blog.google, which is quite indulgent, but I suppose when you have that much money you can do what you want. Theyâve said their purpose for the Keyword is: âTo make it easier for you to find Googleâs official word on any given topicâ, 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 Googleâs 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 Googleâs opinion is on any topic, is really, really useful.
The interesting thing with a lot of these places is theyâre actually run by publishing people. GE reports, they actually hired a journalist â I think his name is Thomas Kellner â 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, thatâs 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. Itâs one weâre trying to move all our clients towards. And thatâs me.