Write Articles AND Blog Postings

Yesterday Jakob Nielsen wrote an insightful article on the differences in blog content and article content. He strongly recommends B2B companies focus their resources on developing unique, well-researched article content. The argument against blogs is basically they are quick comments designed to stir-up controversy and have little long-term relevancy.

I'm not clear if Jakob is recommending articles but in a blog format, or with a blog-esque distribution strategy? If so the strategy would definitely be something we recommend to our clients. But as for writing articles full of great content and simply hosting them on your site, I don't think the client is going to see as much "bang for their buck" from this strategy.

What I feel the article fails to recognize is the need for companies to develop a strong distribution strategy for their article content. The company took the time to write these great articles, now they need to let the world know.

Bloggers tend to be active online submitting their blogs to services like Technorati, commenting on other blogs and employing a variety of tactics to let people know their content is out there. Plus the majority of these services are free, just the time it takes to identify the appropriate outlets and submit the content.

One thing we like to do for articles that are research-heavy is write and distribute online press release announcing the launch of the article. This helps start generating inbound links to the article, giving them relevancy and seeds some early online buzz. Or some clients link to their articles from their blog, marrying the two strategies.