Blogging for Business – How to Extract Value

Blogs can be an incredibly effective means for generating interest, respect and authority for almost any business. A great business blog should create value for current and prospective customers while supporting overall business growth. 

Thoughtful preparation, consistent execution and intelligent optimization are the keys to deriving the true value from a blog, but how to go about these things is not always clear.  This course will provide a soup to nuts overview on creating, maintaining and promoting a successful blog in tactical detail: conceptualization, design & development, editorialization, content creation, promotion and metrics-based optimization. 

This class will address the following topics:

• Content Discovery and Organization Phase – Identify your audience and create a plan to meet their needs. Investigate your competitors and form an overall editorial strategy to capitalize on their gaps and mimic their successes. Simple worksheets and exercises will guide the class towards decisions on tonality, purpose and editorial mission. 
• Wireframe Creation and Blog Design - Provides basic technical guidance in best practice blog user experience, graphic design and hosting setup. Will additionally provide recommendations on design and development services.
• Editorial Calendar Development –Plan and plot detailed editorial needs: frequency (daily vs. weekly), content types (pillar content, evergreen, news, aggregation, roundups, etc.), media types (text, photo, video and graphics) and fulfillment plan (internal vs. external). 
• Promotion – Recommendations and best practices on how to promote a blog – link building, influencer outreach, guest posting, basic SEO guidelines and social media marketing. 
• Metrics and Optimization – Instructions on how to install and conduct basic analysis of Google Analytics on a blog. 

Mike Raffensperger currently serves as the Vice President of Strategy and Creative Development for Magnet Media, a leading digital production studio and marketing services firm. A passionate digital storyteller, Raffensperger has overseen Webby Award honored digital programming for an audience of millions. As a champion digital marketing, he has directed online campaigns for dozens of top-tier media and technology companies, including Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Google, ABC, NBC, Showtime and DreamWorks Animation.

A recognized thought leader, Raffensperger has written and spoken extensively on digital marketing, most recently as the co-author of Digital Media for Business, a Top 10 Amazon bestseller offering a primer on the doing of business in the digital age. He is a Fellow with the Punch Sulzberger Media Executive Residency Program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and holds an undergraduate degree in Business Administration from Messiah College.

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