Sunday, November 3, 2013

What's Your Organization's Topics? - Stay Focused With Blog Categories!


Today my blog is about creating blogging “Categories.” According to my readings in the Social Media Book “Get Up To Speed with Online Marketing” (by Jon Reed), and my Social Media for Business class lecture for the week; “Categories” are a way to keep your blog organized and stay more focused. 

The categories I speak of today in this blog should not be confused with the categories that are described in Google Analytics. Google Analytics defines categories in relation to webpage “Events,” which are different types of actions a page visitor-user makes on your blog or other websites. Such as clicking an ad banner, using flash components, or playing an embedded video you have placed on your page. Categories within Google Analytics would be the element that you’re analyzing for user engagements – such as a video vs. an advertisement (which are two different categories). 

The categories I speak of today should also not be confused with “tags” – which are even more detailed words used to describe subcategories – in which you are drilling down into a topic and breaking it up into many pieces (See Google Analytics & Word Press Help for more details on their definitions of tags and categories). 

Your blog can become more successful with target market reach and engagement, if you can define it into a few broad topical categories. Which will not only help your readers find you, but they will also give you a way to keep your writings better focused on your relevant topics from week to week. As well as it might remind you and give you some ideas for what to write about when you are having difficulties with developing your written content. 

Which topics – well-chosen words - will make the most sense to describe your written materials for your audience? So that they may find your blog easily based on the topics of interest their searching for online. 

For my social media class projects this semester I have been learning and managing both the social media needs for a nonprofit organization called The Sabrina Keller Foundation; as well as writing this personal class blog (and a Facebook page) to create some social media presences as a personal branding tool for my own personal career endeavors. 

Although I have not written a blog for the Keller Foundation project specifically, I will define some “Categories” in which I would place the organization for blog topic(s) if the Foundation had chosen to develop one.  

I thought The Sabrina Keller Foundation could be labeled into six (6) broad categories such as SADS- (Genetics & Heart-Health Education), Non Profits, Girl Scouts, College Scholarships, and Families. 

I of course could have come up with several more topics the Foundation might choose to write about. But according to a recent blog reading I found online (ProBlogger) the fewer categories in a category list; the better it will be for not confusing your readers with a lot of clutter and topic choices. There are many times that a blogger will often go off topic (and add the category) and their categories list will get too long and eventually they become irrelevant to describe the most often written subjects. They recommend that if you have a lot of categories in your existing topics list, look for your categories that are “superfluous,” and combine them into one or emit them altogether.  

The reason why I think these six categories could help the Sabrina Keller Foundation grow and stay organized with their topics is because they all stress the foundation’s mission, which goes beyond just SADS (Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome) Education and College Scholarships for Girl Scouts. It is also based on their goals of having “Family Fun” at all their fundraising events. So I  imagine blog topics of course would revolve around SADS education and information, Girl Scouts and College Scholarships, Heart Health Education,  as well we would probably write about how the family could have fun together.

These would all be topics of interest for our target markets – which is generally families, or parents and mothers – mostly woman between the ages of 25 to mid-fifties - with adolescent children,  or teenagers and their families.

For this blog – my personal branding blog - I had placed the blog within the Google Analytics “Industry Category” of “Business and Industrial Markets,” as my personal blog pertains to my career goals for becoming a Marketing Communications and/or Service/Product Marketing Manager. I could have also possibly placed the Personal Brand Blog under ‘Jobs and Education.”

If I was to create a category list directly into my blog on Blogger – I might also label it under Marketing, Business (Education), Career Development, Social Media, and Human Resources. My target audience is going to be Human Resource Mangers and/or Marketing Professionals who might be able to help me find work or provide opportunities for business networking. 




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1 comment:

  1. Hi David,
    So, I'm going to be SUPER honest.
    1) I really like your background, I've looked around at many of the blogs and yours really caught my eye- BRAVO!
    2) In my opinion (short attention span)- I stopped reading your post midway through the 2nd paragraph. I'm not saying that you should change your writing style, but I'm just letting you know for your market that may be like me.

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