In the recent "How to Write a Blog Post" webinar, I highlighted these four blogs as examples of the four different types of blog posts you can write:
- The Wegman's Fresh Stories blog, for this example of a "how to" post
- Southwest Airline's Nuts About Southwest blog, for this example of a personal post
- The Coaching4Clergy blog (my client J. Val Hastings), for this example of a thought leadership post
- The FreshBooks blog, for this example of a connecting post
FreshBooks are innovators in the field of online invoicing, so it's no wonder that their blog is so creative and entertaining (they can even sing!).
Connecting posts, like this customer portrait of Kristel Yoneda, take the pressure off the blogger to always be dreaming up brand new topics or material (making it much easier to be a weekly blogger).
In this case, the majority of the post comes from an outside source (Kristel's responses to a set of interview questions). Yet the post author's personality still shows through; in the title of the post, in the flavour of the interview questions and in the brief introduction (I might have also added a conclusion).
Client stories are a great way to demonstrate your product or service in action, and will be an interesting read for everyone who visits your blog – people love stories!
Here's another benefit to this type of post: Any blog post that features a client, blogger, author or expert can nurture your relationship with that person - be sure to call the person's attention to your post using my tips in Trackbacks, Reactions and Link Love.
P.S. Did you notice that this post itself is a connecting post? Not only did I use the FreshBooks customer portrait as my central topic (adding my comments and teaching points to make it useful and relevant for you), but the lesson itself was borrowed from the webinar I delivered last month. Now that's how to make blogging easier!