With the myriad of blogs that I’ve written for the site, I sometimes struggle with consistent topics. By that, I mean I’m a developer, but many blogs blur the line between product development, marketing, Web design, and networking. This can lead to confusion about exactly what we do, which has brought me to this: consistency is key.
You’ll recall that in a previous blog, I talked about the editorial/topic calendar I created as part of my plan to produce a blog each week. That calendar has kept me on track throughout the year and helped me feel less overwhelmed since it took the job of deciding what to blog about each week off my plate - I’d already decided that months ago.
Recently, that calendar has evolved as I’ve evaluated my marketing and message. What I’ve determined is that my most successful blogs have all been those that tied the topic back to the core subject of application development and those that educated about the depth of the process we are involved in.
At the core of our business is our application development services and the best responses have always come from those which covered the topic, without making the reader’s eyes glaze over (probably a good quality for any written work). This led me to focus on harder problems that many freelance Web designers can’t tackle (or tackle incorrectly/poorly). I manage a team of developers and we love problem-solving, which means digging into the “guts” of an application or process and figuring out how to make it an effective part of our clients’ business operation. Ask any WordPress expert out there - they couldn’t help you write a customized version of WordPress for you. Sure, they likely know a little code, but they could never create the WordPress platform from scratch.
The second attribute of our successful blogs was education. This thrilled me as I have a soft spot for education and enjoy helping others learn something new. Application development is a very challenging topic to write about and keep it interesting for individuals who don’t live in this world. The technology we create isn’t simple and many of our clients don’t want to understand the layers of their idea to the degree that we do. That said, the education is necessary for our network to understand so that we get better referrals and so that our clients understand that their project is an ongoing conversation. Our focus is on digital product development, automation, and ecommerce and it’s important stay on that message and educate others on what that needs (and what you can easily do yourself).
What are you doing to keep your marketing message consistent? Are you getting the right referrals? Do you have an idea and need someone to help you with the build process? How about someone to just help you screen the right members for your team? Contact us and let us know how we can help or leave a comment about what you’re doing for consistency.