We have elaborated a little on a hubspot post a few months ago. This week we will also feature best practices and state our case for an integrated social media/email marketing campaign. We understand Blogging can be perceived as a pain and maybe even a time-suck, but like all complicated tasks, they are easier when quantified. We hope this helps with your blogging initiatives.

1. Useful, Everyday Posts

These are every day to every other day happenings within your organization or industry.

Examples of topics:
- New members and their products
- Advancements at your company
- Employee showcases and random musings

Posting Characteristics:
- 250 characters or less
- Hyperlinks to other internal or external pages
- One picture
- Should take no longer than 30 minutes to create

2. Redistributed Posts

The easiest posts to make are Redistributed posts. This is when the writer finds a compelling article with lots of media (aka, video, slideshow, scribd), writes a summary of the material and embeds the corresponding media.

Examples of topics:
- White papers
- Press Releases of partners
- How-to videos
- Slideshows of relevant industry material

Posting Characteristics:
- 150 word introduction with hyperlinks crediting original source
- Hyperlinks to other internal or external pages
- Takes around 5 minutes on average to create

3. Discussion Posts (aka “fire starters”)

Discussion Posts are great for starting the conversation online. Some call them “comment bait.” Regardless of what they are called, they need to be prolific with a topic and must relate to a current issue.

Examples of topics:
- “Are CRM based businesses in trouble?”
- “Is Twitter going to put Facebook out of business?”
- Usually will be slightly different view from a current trade publication posts.

Posting Characteristics:
- 250 characters or less
- Hyperlinks to other internal or external pages
- One picture
- Should take no longer than 30 minutes to create

4. Report Posts (aka White Pages)

Report Posts are usually an entry of an internal report or document that is relevant to the community at large. It is best to embed this material as a reader using Scribd.

Examples of topics:
- Reports and White Pages about quarterly stats
- Industry specific information

Posting Characteristics:
- Very short intro with no more than 150 characters summarizing the report
- Hyperlinks to other internal or external pages
- Embed of report or reserved release hyperlink to a pdf download
- 30 minutes tops

5. Thoughtful Posts

These types of posts could be construed as a white paper, but are more of an opinion or opt-ed column style posting. These are once a week or once every 2 week posts and should have insightful ideas about a topic. Yes, this is the most tedious type of post but they must be done every once in a while.

Examples of topics:
- Trends in the industry
- Ways and techniques for product marketing/sales
- Breaking news
- Captivating titles. Example: “5 types of business blogs”

Posting Characteristics:
- 250 words + (usually around 350-500 words)
- Hyperlinks to other internal or external pages
- Several pictures and bullet points
- Takes around 3 hours on average to create

We hope this is helpful and sheds some light on how effective blogging can be in boosting your company’s marketing efforts online.  SEO is an all-important factor in converting eyeballs to leads and we have found no better/easier way to boost page rank than by regularly blogging about your industry.