Everyone in the natural products industry seems to be on the social marketing bandwagon. They have their Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and YouTube videos. But what seems to be missing are their blogs.
 
I did a preliminary scanning of 20 fairly prominent natural products companies (products that I have in my home) who all had Facebook pages, looking for their blogs. I won’t mention the 18 that didn’t have any blog. The two that did were Tom’s of Maine and Stonyfield Farms. Tom’s posted periodically (3 times in one month, once in another etc.), while Stonyfield posted regularly, at least once a week.
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So I ask all the other 18 natural products companies – what is a social media program without a blog? Haven’t you heard about the hub approach to social marketing, where it all begins with the website and a blog and feeds out from there to the social networks?

I realize that these companies do direct their social postings back to their websites, but to where? Probably to their home page, which rarely changes, or to their product pages, which pretty much ends the social dialogue.

What puzzles me is that if there ever was an industry that could create useful, meaningful, emotional, and interesting blog information, it’s the natural products industry. Most of what they create is for the wellness of people and the environment – topics that are of great interest to their constituency.

I realize blogging takes time, and coming up with content copywriting ideas can be hard, but the loyalty it could engender could be huge and long lasting. It would also give more meat to their social networking efforts. And it would help their organic search immeasurably (and anything organic to this group is usually highly appealing).

It’s Monday. And you have no idea what you’re going to write about in your blog, newsletter, etc. You could hire acopywriter and hope that he or she will provide you with an ongoing stream of content that will be useful to your prospects and customers, while at the same time making you more search engine food. But at the end of the day, you – the person in charge of marketing your company – have to come up with the ideas.

So how do you get that brain of yours churning up ideas?

Think Outside Your Company

My friend Jeanne Hopkins, Director of Marketing at HubSpot, is probably the best idea generator I’ve ever met. She talks about looking outside the company for inspiration. Don’t just think about what your products can do for people, but look at who those people are and what other interests they may have outside the solution you offer.

For example, your company offers a natural product that provides wellness to indigestion. You can talk all you want about the digestive system (and several of your posts should be about that), but your customers have other interests. Maybe they are drawn to you because of their interest in organics and the environment. If that’s the case, then give them an “inside scoop” on organic agriculture.

Basically, use the data you have about your customers and create a profile or persona of several different types of customers. List all of the interests that these ‘types’ might have. Then pick a few of those interests and write about them from your perspective.

For example: One persona could be female, age 34-44, mother, lives in suburbs, works full-time, feels her life is stressful, prefers organic food, goes to the gym, likes good food.
From this you can write about the following:

• 5 ways to reduce stress
• How organic food can save your children
• Soothing music to commute by
• 4 recipes the whole family will love
• 6 main causes for indigestion

Notice the last idea relates to the company that relieves indigestion. In that particular post, you could list reducing stress, eating well, and exercising as 3 of the ways that can relieve indigestion, thus reinforcing the attributes endorsed by the persona.

All of these posts are something you can write about. There’s plenty of information out there on the web that you can easily access for your research. The key, however, is to believe what you write. When you provide content for others to read, you are trying to build trust with your prospects and customers. You want to give them something useful that you can stand by.

So shake out those Monday morning cobwebs and come up with at least 3 blog post ideas.
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Next Monday: Creating content using keywords as inspiration.