More often than not, the process of blog writing is one of trial and error. You plan a blog that in your mind works perfectly for your brand only to publish and find out that it doesn’t work. Like… not even a little. So you go back to the drawing board and try a different approach with your company blog. As seasoned ghostwriters and , we see companies go through this experimentation routine over and over again. The worst thing a brand can do, however, is stop blogging altogether. Finding the right niche just takes time, and the more you try, the more you learn. The Gap is one brand that has been through the ringer more than once with online marketing but they never give up. This spirit of stick-to-it-ness is especially tenacious when it comes to blogging.
In the retail clothing realm, things have changed over the last couple of years. The old brick and mortar business model is on life support and big clothing chains who haven’t embraced e-commerce are basically extinct. The Gap is one chain that has survived, although not without a series of setbacks and hard-learned lessons. With blogging, The Gap has tried — and failed at — several genres. Last year, the company hopped on the Tumblr bandwagon only to ditch it after a few months. Before that, there was a jumbled faux magazine blog called GapMag which wanted to be a glossy online magazine for Gap fans but could never quite figure out how to do that.
Yet you’d never know there was a trail of failed blogs by looking at aDressed, the company’s current blog. Slick and all-encompassing of The Gap as well as its sub-brands Banana Republic, Old Navy, Athleta and Piperlime, aDressed covers fashion and as well as the ins and outs of the busy company. New ad campaigns, promotions and shopping tips are also covered in well-written blog posts that delve deeper than social media ever could. Also, since aDressed covers all of the brands under the Gap umbrella, there’s never a shortage of things to post about. There’s a confidence and pride in aDressed as a blog and that, in turn, makes shoppers feel confident, too.
The Gap’s “try, try, again” attitude to blogging is one we should all adopt. Blog creation and blog marketing won’t always be an overnight success, nor will it always work forever. Being open to trying new things will keep your blog fresh and your readers engaged. Another great idea we should take from The Gap is widening the reach of our blog (and you don’t need sub-brands to do that). Creating posts that cover every aspect of our business provides a monsoon of topics during those creative droughts. Feel free to write posts which profile all of your company’s services, company history, products, loyal employees and special offers. The more topics, the better! A wide variety of blog categories and tags can help guide an expansive list of blog topics, too.
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