The evolution of blogs since the 1990s has expanded from the original weblog to microblogs/miniblogs (such as Pinterest, Twitter and LinkedIn), video blogs (vlogs) and audio blogs (podcasts). Blogs continue to be featured in many inbound marketing programs. However, multiple surveys reveal that customers want more than blog content when evaluating services and products.
This skepticism is due in part to the potential misuse of blogs and blog-like platforms to artificially impact search engine results via techniques such as excessive backlinks, affiliate marketing, blogging networks and duplicate promotional content. To improve and replace traditional blogging, practical alternatives include extended articles, case studies, white papers, SlideShare presentations and YouTube videos.
The Thinking Outside of the Blog series by Stephen Bush consists of articles, YouTube videos and SlideShare presentations with a common theme — to improve business writing and inbound marketing strategies. Here is an abbreviated topic summary of these reports and presentations:
- How to Educate Your Customers Using Case Studies
- Business Writing Mistakes to Avoid
- How to Improve the Business Proposal Writing Process
- The Art and Science of Writing Press Releases
- How and Why to Think Outside of the Blog
- Content Marketing Strategies That Work (and Some That Don’t)
- How to Use Inbound Marketing for Quality Improvement
- The Old and the New: Making Business Writing More Effective
- How to Improve Business Writing
- How and Why to Fix Zombie Business Problems
- The Best and Worst Content Writing and Marketing Strategies
- How to Improve the Bottom Line
Stephen Bush and PlanBush 