Blog creation for businesses begins with a simple want: the desire to teach folks more about your brand. Then newborn bloggers try to figure out what platform to use, how/when to blog and what to blog about. From there, your blog can look a jillion different ways — it’s up to you to decide which design best fits your company’s brand. Every Monday, we gander at mega-companies and see how they do this blogging thing and then figure out how their ideas might work for our blogs, too. Today, we hop over to furniture and accessory chain HomeGoods to see how the style and interior site makes its blog look great.
Whether you own a vintage furniture shop or design a line of shoes, one thing in branded blogging is an unbreakable rule: If you are in the business of style, then your blog had better be stylish, too! HomeGoods, a subsidiary of the company that also owns Marshalls and TJ Maxx, might sell discounted furniture, linens and various home-centric items, but that doesn’t mean its blog looks “discount.” In keeping with the trends in the interior design world, HomeGoods’ blog is filled with images meant to inspire readers to do a little redecorating of their own. Particularly clever are the posts that serve as firsthand testimonials for reorganizing, redecorating or remodeling. Real HomeGoods employees blog about how just a few simple changes transformed an ugly porch, cramped closet or underwhelming bathroom. The blog also has fun, ready-for-Pinterest posts about seasonal decorating, gift ideas and engaging poll topics. We live in the inspiration/information age, so HomeGoods has wisely gotten on-board and created a blog that reads like the hybrid of a chic women’s magazine, a design catalogue and a decorating blog.
The great takeaway here? Don’t be afraid of style. You need not feature photos of multi-million-dollar homes or celebrity bling in order to have blog that looks great and is filled with the sort of branded content your customers want to read. Style comes in different forms, so it is important to work with designers, ghostwriters and online marketers that really understand your brand’s style. After all, you have to live with your blog, too — and you want to proudly send folks there, so don’t settle for anything less than fabulous.
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