The Junction Networks Team has been planning to revamp the blog for a few weeks now. Recently, we came across a Jason Fried of 37signals video that not only articulates our approach, but contains great guidance for all business blogs.
It doesn't take much to qualify Jason Fried's knowledge. Fried and his colleagues at 37signals have created web apps now used by over 3 million people [1]. Yet, 37signals does not have a PR Team. They do not have traditional marketing campaigns. They do not spend money on advertising. Instead, they simply share information about their expertise, including their product features and business efficiency, in their blog.
One specific example Fried gives is a small blog post he's written on the Yellow Fade Technique, which is a feature in the Basecamp application To-Do list. When a user adds a task to the To-Do list, the task is highlighted with yellow that fades. This effect signifies to the user that the task has been added. "It's a small little tiny thing," says Fried. "But, we thought it was really effective and we thought it was really interesting...We decided to write about it and document it... so you can do it in your own product... Now we have 800,000 people who have seen this article, which has some educational value to it, but also has our company name in it."
The bottom line here is that people aren't interested in sifting through a bunch of online advertisements. You, and everyone else, are interested in information that is useful to you; it's what helps you run your business and enhances your life in some way. So, if businesses would like to build an audience, they should focus on providing educational content in their area of expertise.
Now, it's our turn. We will build a blog on what we're good at: Implementing VoIP technology, building web apps, and growing a business. We're going to give you a look into our methodology and thought process - from marketing decisions to business management software to code implementations.
You will see we have separated the blog into six new categories:
Industry News- business web app and VoIP news
OnSIP News - OnSIP feature releases, news coverage, customer reviews, and future plans
OnSIP Tips - webinars, How-To's, and Tips on using OnSIP products
Reviews - IP phone reviews, chat client reviews, business web app reviews
Tech Talk - all things code and IT related from our OnSIP engineers and sales team
Network Alerts - notifications on network maintenance, etc.
We hope you'll find what you need, comment on blogs and keep on reading. But, most of all, we hope our writing will help you in your business ventures!