Cmp.ly makes it easy for a brand to signal the presence of a material connection — payment of any sort— between itself, bloggers and other digital producers through a system called iconic compliance. Using Cmp.ly,  a brand sets up an iconic tag  at the beginning of a social media campaign and then invites its influencers to participate. All social media elements materially connected to the brand running that campaign — from Tweets to blogs — clearly signal the degree of their relationship — from promo to sponsorship — by using the appropriate icon. Consumers will see immediately whether a blog post, Tweet or video is materially connected.

Cmp.ly was created as a solution when the FTC updated  its guidelines related to testimonials and endorsements Oct. 5, 2009, extending them to the digital sphere.

Industry observers say the FTC update  was past due.

“The FTC has not done a terrific job of protecting consumers,” said Joe Cappo, who was a publisher for 20 years at Crain Communications, and who now consults and teaches at DePaul University, Chicago. “There are no rules to govern all this stuff. “

“When a media becomes as important as network television, I think someone needs to step in and set up the ground rules. “

“I believe that a lot of bad information creates the demand for good information,” Cappo said. “There are too many bloggers who don’t care, who are just doing it to make money or to make trouble. Can we regulate it? It would be very difficult.“

The FTC update caused an uproar among bloggers at the time. Some felt the Internet rules  stomped on their rights to free speech and they criticized the rules for being impossible to implement.

Internet marketer and social media guru Chris Brogan responded  to the FTC by calling out to bloggers to provide voluntary full disclosure.  Brogan’s marketing company specializes in developing social media marketing campaigns for brands. At the same time, a blog disclosurepolicy.org was launched to help bloggers  develop their own full disclosure rules – the site has not been updated recently.

“Traditionally journalists had certain ethical standards to abide by, while Joe Shmo on the street — did not necessarily,” said Daliah Saper, a Chicago-based attorney at a recent session on the FTC rules at Social Media Week Chicago. “The traditional definition of journalists does not exist necessarily any more and that is why the new media guidelines were added,” she added.

But brands, not blogs, are the focus of FTC scrutiny and the solutions developed by Cmp.ly meet FTC regulations exactly, said Ruth Wagner, VP Sales/Shareholder for the company who was also present at the Social Media Week session.

Wagner says cmp.ly is the only commercial solution available and that it is at the vanguard of a move toward transparency and full disclosure.

“The adaption of social media transparency and cmp.ly are identical. “ she said.

The FTC has indicated it will be increasing its watch for brands that are engaging in deceptive practices. In one recent case, Legacy Learning Systems was required to pay the FTC a $250,000 penalty and is subject to monthly audits for 20 years. Other cases include Reverb Communications.

On its website, Cmp.ly says it has three goals:

Simplify and standardize regulatory compliance and disclosures so businesses can contribute to an open, transparent marketplace and build trust with consumers

Enable companies of any size to meet regulatory and disclosure challenges in an efficient, cost-effective manner

Provide consumers with a simple way to recognize and understand business relationships, affiliations, and marketing practices

For brands, the first two goals ease operations under FTC guidelines.

From my perspective as an individual who uses the Internet to research products, the third is music to my ears. The lack of transparency on the Web has undermined the ethical fabric of all our transactions there. I simply don’t know who to trust and I’m not alone in that. Free blogging tools have been around for only ten years, but I shudder to think what the blogosphere will look like in another ten without some oversight.

Using the Cmp.ly solution are LinkedIn, EBay, Hewlett Packard, Infinity, Ford, JC Penny and Ugg Australia, among others, Wagner said. Cmp.ly is also developing solutions for the highly regulated financial and health industries.

While brands must pay to use Cmp.ly, individuals can use the cmp.ly system for free. In addition, Cmp.ly links provide appropriate social media analytics to measure the success of a campaign.

Although brands have found an exciting new marketing channel in social media, it’s time to slow down and refine  practices used in word of mouse marketing.

To my mind, tools like Cmp.ly could significantly quiet the marketing stream for consumers.

It’s getting very loud out there on the virtual continent that is the Internet. Some days I’d just as soon listen to a jackhammer as look at my email so clogged is it with email newsletters reciting the charms of something I don’t want. In its outermost public circle, Twitter is blatting out marketing messages that pollute my stream of must see information. Google+ is great for my more thoughtful friends – thankfully a little quieter than Facebook, where a feed now calls out at every tiny touch between entities – brands, friends, causes, colleagues and family. Give me some earplugs and a blindfold or better yet it’s time to turn off the Macbook and go outside.

This would be shortsighted, however, because the social web is here to stay. If we can all hold on, the next wave of disruption promises to offer some help for ordering this chattering assault into something resembling harmony.

I am on the lookout for tools that will help with this transition.  I think one such tool could be Cmp.ly.

If you know of others, please let me know.

The post Is squeaky clean for FTC next wave in social media branding? Hope so. appeared first on 435 Digital.

Learning to talk starts with the sense of hearing and the ability to actively listen. By listening to the stream of sounds coming from our environment we start to understand and say words. Over time, we learn to put these words together into complete thoughts that we call sentences. Before too long, we string the sentences together and begin to tell the story of what is happening around us and how we experience it. We meet others and share our stories. This storytelling give-and-take is a lifelong reiterative conversation that forms our identity and self definition. Our ability to engage in this conversation deeply influences our path in the world.

Your business learns social media much like a baby learns to talk. First, you listen online to understand what your name, or brand, means to your customers. The sounds you hear might be pleasant — or not. Either way, what’s certain is your customers are conveying important information. It’s your choice whether or not to understand the sounds and fully engage in this reiterative conversation.

Nobody can decide for you. It’s a straight-forward challenge that smacks at the culture of  your organization and the ongoing story that is the interplay of you, your products and your customers.  It’s a challenge that asks you to understand how deeply you value customer service — really.  The repercussions of your choice will be felt all along your value chain of competitors, collaborators, and suppliers.

To get started in this conversation, you need to understand the tools, tactics and strategies of the evolving social media toolbox so you can choose those that work best for you. But as important as learning the tools, is learning how to talk in the world of social media.

By taking on the 435Digital blog beat, I’ve accepted the challenge of  helping us better understand tools like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and the nature of the conversation that accompanies them. As important, I’ll be discussing the cultural change and relational juice that is creating a new online economy based on trust and transparency. It’s exciting to peer around the edges of what “is” to see what is possible.

As to my philosophy, I agree with Gary Vaynerchuk, who says in his book  “The Thank You Economy:”

For the record, I dislike the term social media. It is a misnomer that has caused a boatload of confusion. It has led managers, marketers, CEOs and CMOS to think that they can use social networking sites to spread their message the same way they use traditional media platforms like print, radio, television. or outdoor and expect similar results and returns. But what we call social media is not media, nor is it even a platform. It is a massive cultural shift that has profoundly affected the way society uses the greatest platform ever invented: the internet. Unfortunately, when the business world is thinking about marketing via social networking sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Daily Booth, it’s thinking about using social media, so that’s the term I’ll use.

This massive cultural shift is to the Knowledge Age from the Industrial Age. And I think Gary is right,  there’s no such thing as a “media buy” in social media. Your online success is determined by the culture of your business and the timbre of conversations and relationships that emerge organically from who you are and what you say and do.

The same is true for me and my work on the 435 Digital blog. As we learn together, let me know how I am doing.

p.s. I love my little Twitter bird. I keep him with me always @SaDuros.

The post Learning to talk: Sally Duros joins 435 Digital appeared first on 435 Digital.

The Vintage Bazaar, a flea market featuring vintage clothing, accessories and furniture, drew 11,000 people to two separate events. The first event, held in February in Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood, drew 3,000 people. The second event, held in August in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, drew 8,000 people.

Vintage Bazaar was organized by two young women with no prior experience running flea markets. Instead, they were driven by a passion for vintage design and social media. The blog Back Garage brought them together.

Back Garage is a blog focused on interior design and secondhand furniture. Katherine Raz, who studied magazine journalism at Columbia College, launched Back Garage in 2008 when she decided to get “a real job.” To demonstrate her skills, her mentor had recommended she start a blog.

“I wanted to combine two things I liked the most, which was shopping secondhand and interior design,” Raz says.

Raz drew on her background in magazine journalism to plan and write her blog posts. To do research, she plowed through books on design and furniture. “I was basically writing magazine-style posts on shopping at estate sales, before-and-after décor pieces, stuff on how to search eBay,” Raz says.

Over time, she developed several features on Back Garage.  One feature was Craigslist round-ups of great furniture finds on Craigslist.

“At the time, there was enough to go around on Cragislist,” she says. “Craigslist has changed a lot in the two years since then because there are so many dealers on Craigslist. In 2009, there were still a lot of people on Craigslist who didn’t know what they had—you could find things really cheap. That’s not so much the case anymore.”

Raz gained a following for creating a weekly round-up of Chicago’s best estate sales and garage sales. She tried to monetize it by charging $1 for a PDF every week. Nine people subscribed. “I was making $9 a week and it was a lot of work to put it together,” she says.

Raz continued creating the list every week as well as doing the round-up. She also began doing  tours of well-decorated homes in Chicago.   A young woman named Libby Alexander contacted her and asked if Raz wanted to do an apartment tour of her place.

While touring Alexander’s apartment, the two women instantly bonded and the conversation turned to flea markets. Raz had been inspired by Chicago’s Renegade Craft Fair, a fair featuring handmade goods. “I’d done a post on how people had used vintage display pieces in their Renegade set-up, like using an old vintage cake dish to show whatever handmade thing they were selling,” she recalls. “I was thinking, I wish there was something just like this but for vintage things.”

Alexander and Raz put their heads together, trying to think of a flea market in Chicago that focused on design and vintage items. They couldn’t think of one.  That’s when they got the idea to do it themselves.

“We thought we’d do something small, at the Empty Bottle [a small concert venue in Chicago],” Raz says. “I’d contacted Colleen, the Chicago community manager at Yelp, and asked her where I’d do this.  I’d obviously never done an event like this before.”

The Yelp community manager connected Raz and  Alexander with Dank Haus, which is also the German American Cultural Center in Chicago. A ballroom is on the fifth floor of the Dank Haus. “I remember walking into the ballroom and thinking, ‘This is huge—she’s out of her mind,’” Raz says. “But Colleen kept saying if you’re going to do it, you should it big.”

Raz used Back Garage to advertise that she was looking for vendors to sign on for the flea market. Alexander and Raz also scoured Etsy, the e-commerce site for handmade goods, to find people who’d never considered selling at a flea market.  All in all, 40 vendors signed on.

The day of the event, Raz and Alexander had no idea what to expect. The 40 vendors sold a mix of goods—vintage clothing, handbags, jewelry, 80s memorabilia, vintage glasses, household décor, repurposed vintage accessories and furniture.

More than 3,000 people showed up that day at Dank Haus. It was way more than Raz and Alexander had expected, especially considering the ballroom is on the fifth floor of Dank House and furniture would need to be carried out. In fact, the crowds were so big, Raz and Alexander had to do crowd control.

“The vendors were so buzzed—everyone had a good time,” Raz says. “It was pretty obvious that we needed to do it again.”

Raz and Alexander scouted Chicago for the right next location. They found it in the Congress Theater, located in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood. Held in August, the second Vintage Bazaar drew almost three times as many people. More than 8,000 people packed the Vintage Bazaar that day.

Raz credits the success of the second event to social media. “We selected vendors for event who already had a blog or a website, who were selling online, who were on Twitter or who had a Facebook page for their shops,” Raz says. “They were also mouth pieces for the event, which I think is really key.”

Raz now works full-time on Vintage Bazaar and Back Garage, which she turned into an online shop for refurbished furniture. “I go to estate sales, auctions, flea markets where I buy furniture and clean it up,” she says. “I have a garage that’s already overflowing and am trying to find a space in the city that I can use as studio to refurbish stuff and list online.”

You could call it an ironic twist of fate, considering Raz launched Back Garage in 2008 as a launching pad to a “real job.”  Really it speaks to the power of social media and Raz—and Alexander’s—ability to harness it into a real-life community of people who are passionate about all things vintage.

The post The blog behind Chicago’s hottest flea market appeared first on 435 Digital.

Make sure you’re ready first

Before announcing your blog to the world, double check everything. Check for spelling and grammar errors, test all of your links and look at your website in different browsers and on different computers. It’s a good idea to share your blog with a couple of close friends who can also eyeball it and offer feedback.

Be sure to publish a few back posts. Readers don’t want to read just a “Welcome to my blog post” entry when they land on your blog for the first time. They want to read several posts so they can decide if your blog is one worth returning to.

Don’t forget the basics, too. Your blog should have an about page and a contact page. The about page explains who you are and what your blog is about.  Your contact page can be a contact form or it can list your actual contact information. It’s your call how much you share on both the about and contact pages. Since this is a company blog, we recommend erring on the side of professionalism.

To get the word out, send personalized emails to your contacts

Use the announcement of your new blog as a chance to personally reconnect with old friends, peers and clients. Think of it like sending holiday cards. Yes, it will take quite a bit more time to send personalized notes–but the actual results will make it worth the effort. One, you’ll strengthen your relationship with old contacts. Two, your personal touch will encourage them to actually click on the link to your blog.

In the very beginning, your blog will depend on your real-life contacts. You need them to return to your blog regularly, to share it with their friends and to link to your blog from their own blogs. This is how you start to build an audience of people who have never met you IRL (in real life).

Add your blog address to your email signature and your business cards

It’s basic advice, but this is something many companies neglect to do. To keep your blog address short and memorable, we recommend the url www.yourcompanyname.com/blog.

If you don’t feel comfortable giving your blog address out to everyone, you can make special cards to promote your blog. This card could also include your Twitter username, which we’ll talk about in a bit.

Link to your latest post on Facebook

Once your blog is up and running, Facebook is a great way to share your latest blog posts.  All you need to do is attach the link from your blog post (make sure it’s the permalink url and not the blog’s general url) onto the wall of your Facebook profile page. The link will appear as an update on your friends’ Facebook news feeds; they can click on the link and be taken directly to your blog post.

Of course, you may be uncomfortable sharing your company blog posts with your personal friends. This is understandable. Fortunately, there are a couple of great workarounds.

On your personal Facebook account, you can create Facebook Lists. Facebook Lists are lists of people you’ve hand-selected from your followers. You might create one list for all of your family members, another for your closet friends and a third for your colleagues.  Once you’ve created your lists, you can customize the privacy settings for each list and control who sees what.

To learn how to create a Facebook list, you can watch our recent interview with ABC’s Judy Hsu.

If you have already have a Facebook fan page set up for your business, that’s an excellent way to promote your company blog. Just like on your personal Facebook page, you can attach links to your latest blog posts. Any Facebook users who have “liked” your Facebook fan page will receive your fan page’s updates in their personal news feeds.

In the weeks ahead, we’ll talk more about creating an effective Facebook fan page for your business.

Start tweeting

Contrary to popular belief, Twitter is not just a place to talk about what you ate for breakfast in 140 characters or less. It is a micro-blogging platform and one of the most efficient ways to promote your blog posts.

For example, last night 37signals’ Jason Fried tweeted a link to the interview we did with him last week about planning your editorial strategy. Jason has more than 46,000 followers on Twitter and thus, in less than 24 hours, our interview has been retweeted 40 times. The link has been seen by tens of thousands of people today. Talk about real-time results.

In the weeks ahead, we will also talk more about tweeting effectively. For now, the basics:

• Keep your profile professional. A photo of yourself or your company logo works great. Be sure to include a link to your blog in your profile.
• Follow wisely. You want to follow people who you can learn from and who will follow you back. Chances are these are two different kinds of people. Thought-leaders and celebs will rarely follow you back, though they often share informative and entertaining thoughts. Peers in your industry likely will likely follow you back and even retweets some of your links.
• Don’t overdo the follows. You want to keep your number of followers very close to the number of people you are following. There’s two reasons for this. One, you will look like a spammer if you follow way more people. Two, Twitter will block you from following more people if the numbers greatly differ.
• Give 80%, take 20%. The worst thing you can do on Twitter is talk about yourself and your company over and over.  To be a part of the community, you need to truly  listen and respond to the people you are following. That way, when it’s time to promote your blog posts or pose a question for feedback, your followers will be more inclined to respond to you.

Send out an e-newsletter

Chances are you already send e-newsletters to your current and prospective customers. If not, we highly recommend you start sending an e-newsletter out at least quarterly. A great service to use is Constant Contact.

Don’t think you have enough to fill a newsletter? Think again. Your blog posts easily lend themselves to  e-newsletters. What’s more, you can send people from your e-newsletter to your blog and from your blog to your e-newsletter. All you need to do is add a “Subscribe To My E-Newsletter” button on your blog and a “Visit My Blog” call-out on your e-newsletter.

Of course, you’ll want to have fresh content in your e-newsletter. It’s a good idea to write content exclusively for your e-newsletter so readers will have an incentive to keep receiving it. Another idea is to republish blog posts by peers in your industry. You’ll need to get their permission, of course. Chances are they’ll gladly give it, as well as a link to your blog from their own blogs.

-Tracy Samantha Schmidt

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Don’t miss our complete series, Starting Your Company Blog.

Part One: Planning your editorial strategy

Part Two: Elements of a great blog post

Part Three: How to promote your posts

The post Starting your company blog: How to promote your posts appeared first on 435 Digital.

Keep it short

Most readers spend less than four minutes reading a blog post. That means your blog posts should be under 1,000 words. Granted you can write longer posts, but you want to keep readers’ attention. If they drift away before finishing a post, chances are they will not return to your blog.

For posts that must be longer than 1,000 words, we recommend breaking the post up into two or more parts. What’s great about doing that is stretches your material and gives you a hook to get readers to return to your blog for part two.

Have a purpose

As we wrote yesterday, your blog posts must serve a purpose. You must always strive to inform and/or entertain your readers.

If you are writing to inform, be sure to include lots of links in your posts. The links can be to relevant websites and articles. We are big fans of how-to posts, especially because they are the kinds of posts that readers share with others and return to themselves for a refresher.

If you are writing to entertain, you must have a personality. Readers will get turned off by posts that sound like press releases. Your posts should make readers laugh, move them, cause them to feel emotion. It is the personal connection that will entice readers to return to your blog.

Watch your tone

Because you are writing a company blog, you want to remain professional.  Sure, you can be a bit edgy or informal, but it’s best to always stay near the middle of the road in your writing. You also don’t want to over-share information about yourself or your clients. If you can’t say it IRL (in real life), don’t say it online.

Follow an outline

Just like your English teacher taught you, your blog posts should have a beginning, middle and end.

The intro to your post should be something to hook people’s attention. This might be a funny anecdote, a statistic or quote. From the hook, you’ll transition into the meat of your post. This is where you might explain a how-to or share resources.

For ease of reading, keep paragraphs short. They should never be longer than four or five sentences long. Also take advantage of style elements like bullet points, numbered lists and subheadings.

The end of your blog post should be one of two things. If it’s an entertaining story, your ending can be a kicker–a phrase that’s funny or poignant. If the post is supposed to be helpful, then it should be a call-to-action. That call-to-action can be to contact you, but you should do that sparingly. Otherwise, readers will come to see your blog as a sales pitch and it will lose credibility.

Include a photo whenever possible

You don’t want to read a long block of text and neither do your readers. That’s why having at least one photo on every blog post is key. Photos also add professional polish to any blog post–that is, of course, if the photos are tasteful and relevant.

At ChicagoNow, the network of blogs we launched last year, the question new bloggers asked most often was “How do I find photos?”  Using copyrighted photos is illegal, and if the owner finds out that you’re using her photo without permission, she can make you take it down immediately.

The easiest way around this is obviously using your own photos. If you’re going to use your own photo for a post, make sure that you have the permission of every person in the photo to publish it online.

Chances are you’ll write a blog post that you do not have a photo for. We recommend Search.CreativeCommons.org, which is a search engine of content that have special copyrights for reuse. The photo for this post, for example, was found through Creative Commons.

When using an image you found through Creative Commons, be sure to check the copy right on the image. Some owners ask that you include their name and website when posting the image on your blog.

Headlines are no place to be cute

Be sure to keep your headlines literal. Why? Because literal headlines help you to rank in the search engines. They also help your readers to understand what your blog post is about when it is shared via social media such as Facebook or Twitter. Including the full names of people and places may also help your posts to rank higher and be shared more often.

These are the elements to a making a great blog post. Next we’ll talk about how to promote your blog posts using social media.

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Don’t miss our complete series, Starting Your Company Blog.

Part One: Planning your editorial strategy

Part Two: Elements of a great blog post

Part Three: How to promote your posts

The post Starting your company blog: Elements of a great post appeared first on 435 Digital.

Before you hit publish, you should develop a solid editorial strategy that looks at least six months ahead. The worst thing you can do is blog for three months and burn out. To customers, you would look disorganized and uncommitted.

One of the best company blogs around is the blog Signal vs Noise. It is written by the staff of 37signals, a Chicago-based firm that sells web-based collaboration software. Their products like Basecamp and Highrise help businesses remotely manage projects and contacts.

What’s compelling about 37signals’ blog is that it doesn’t focus on 37signals. Primarily Signal vs Noise focuses on topics that interest their customers and peers–specifically design, business, experience, the web and culture.

When 37signals staff does write about its products, they do so with great transparency. They aren’t hawking their products. They’re talking about the thinking that went into them and asking readers for feedback.

More than 150,000 people read Signal vs Noise every day. In March, 37signals published a book called Rework. The book was an immediate hit, topping both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal best seller lists.

So what’s Signal vs Noise’s secret sauce? There isn’t one. The blog takes a lot of time, energy and creativity from the staff of 37signals. It’s also 10 years in the making, says Jason Fried, the co-founder and president of 37signals.

“It’s going to take a long time to build an audience,” says Fried, who also writes a monthly column for Inc. “You can build a nice audience of 2,000 people in a year.The thing is you have to have something to say–that’s the most important thing.You can’t just start a blog and talk about yourself the whole time. You have to give people things that are useful to them.”

That’s why having an editorial strategy is key.  Here are some tips to follow, based on what we learned from developing ChicagoNow, a network of more than 350 blogs.

Decide what you want to say

You have a lot to talk about besides your company. Think about the topics that your team is both interested in and qualified to write about. The topics shouldn’t be too broad or too niche–you want to have enough material to easily write about for a long time.

Think about who you want to read your blog

Just like a magazine editor always thinks of her audience, as a blogger you must always think of your audience. Certainly you want to write for your customers—but what kind of customers? Current customers? Potential customers?

Depending on the business you’re in, your customers may not spend much time online. And for those customers who are online, they may not actually think they want to read a blog written by your company. It will be your job to convince them that they do want to read your blog.

You’ll also want to consider writing for your peers. Blogs are an excellent way to gain the respect of your industry, which in turn can lead to more opportunities and partnerships for your company.

Think about what your audience wants to read

Your audience is already pressed for time. To get them to return to your blog regularly, you’ll need to create posts they can rely on and benefit from. Maybe your blog posts are different kinds of tips or how-to’s. Perhaps they are funny or inspiring stories. The posts might be as simple as interesting articles and videos you came across that day.

Whatever kinds of posts you write for your company blog, they must serve a purpose. They must always inform and/or entertain your audience.

Do your research

Certainly your audience is already reading other blogs, some of which may be written by your competitors. Study those blogs every day. Look at what they write about, how they structure their posts and the way they promote their posts and talk with their readers.

The trick is to be inspired, not threatened by, other blogs.  Start building relationships with bloggers that impress you. Leave comments on their posts, retweet their tweets, link to a particularly good post on your Facebook page.  When your blog is live, you will likely find a ready audience in established bloggers. A link from their blog to your blog will go a very long way.

Create an editorial calendar.

Building and maintaining a blog takes a lot of time.  And, if you’re like most business owners, you never have enough time. So before you even start blogging, create your editorial calendar. Here’s how:

1. Decide how much time your team can realistically devote to your blog each week. If it’s 10 hours, then it’s 10 hours.
2. Divvy that time into the individual tasks that go into producing your blog. Each post will need time spent on research, writing, editing, laying out, promoting the post and responding to readers. To start, you won’t know how much time each task will take, but you can make an educated guess.
3. Plot out your blog posts for the first month. This can and should be vague to start. You might decide that every Monday you’ll post a how-to; every Wednesday a profile of a successful business; every Friday an interview with an industry leader. The consistency will keep you focused and your readers will come to rely on it.
4. Assign specific posts to your team members. Make sure they are turned in at least a day before they’re scheduled to go live. You don’t want to get in the habit of missing deadlines.
5. Reach out to guest contributors. Chances are you know many people who would be honored to contribute a post to your blog. Take them out for coffee or a drink to discuss the post they’ll be writing.
6. Start writing your posts now. Even if your blog isn’t set to go live for another month, use this time to create “evergreen posts.” An evergreen post can be used at any time and is usually a feature like a how-to. You’ll be glad you have evergreen posts when a guest contributor falls through at the last minute.

We can’t stress enough that blogging takes a lot of time and dedication. Yet done right, the investment into a company blog is priceless.

Just ask 37signals’ Jason Fried. “Whenever we have something new to launch or talk about, we post on our blog,” he says. “To reach 150,000 people who want to hear what we have to say–I don’t know how much that would cost me to advertise or get the word out any other way. It would be impossible.”

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Don’t miss our complete series, Starting Your Company Blog.

Part One: Planning your editorial strategy

Part Two: Elements of a great blog post

Part Three: How to promote your posts

The post Starting your company blog: Planning your editorial strategy appeared first on 435 Digital.