You’ve probably seen digital signage in a number of places.
Public places and business locations often have digital signage.
An example would be a screen in the airport that directs you to your correct gate. A digital sign next to that might offer an ad for food or something else in the airport or in the city where you are.
Airports, hotels, restaurants, dentist offices, universities and many other organizations are using digital signage for a variety of purposes.
It’s replacing printed signage. You can imagine that printing out a sign and making changes in a few months would be frustrating…and expensive. With a digital sign you can simply change the design on the screen.
Four Winds Interactive is one of the leaders in the digital signage industry.
Today we’re going to look at their blogging strategy.
1. Featured Post On Main Blog Page
I don’t think we’ve touched on this before. It’s a design element of a business blog.
If you look at the Four Winds Blog you’ll see that they have a featured area for a featured post at the top.
This is something some businesses want to have and it can be a great design element of a blog. The reason for the featured post area is to highlight a post that is very important.
If you’re using Twitter you’ve probably seen that they have an option to pin a tweet. This puts a tweet at the top of your feed. So when people visit your feed or profile they see that tweet first even if it’s not the latest tweet.
Same concept with a featured post on a blog. You could have the featured post be the latest post. Or you could manually choose the post to add.
Some businesses use the featured post area to feature a popular post or a press release or something like a post on a recent round of funding.
You don’t need to have it, but it can be a good tool to highlight a specific post that you want visitors to see.
The only nitpick on the Four Winds featured post would be to make the title clickable. The “read more” link is a little hard to see, but that’s a small nitpick.
2. List Post Combined With A How-To Post
The post on the Four Winds blog – 5 Ways To Improve Digital Signage ROI – is a great example of a list post combined with a how-to post.
These are two of the most successful blog post formats we see at Ghost Blog Writers. We write these a lot for our clients. Obviously the topic and content changes, but the format is something most readers like.
List posts are easy to scan and read. You can read the whole post beginning to end or you can skip ahead and jump back; whatever you prefer.
And how-to posts are great especially when they provide actionable steps. People are curious and want to know how to do things. When you use your industry knowledge and experience to help your target audience do things they want to do you’ll be adding value with your business blog. That earns trust and often business.
The only small thing on this post for Four Winds would be to get into even more detail. It’s a great start and idea. Adding even more content and context on this post would make it great.
3. Mistakes Posts
Nobody likes making mistakes. There are probably studies out that show that people dislike making mistakes more than they like making the right decision.
It works like that in sports. Most people hate losing more than they like winning. It’s the power to not lose that drives some of the best athletes in the world. Winning is the norm. Losing is what drives them.
knowing this psychology can help you craft posts and that’s what Four Winds did with this post. It touches on some common mistakes that could happen with a conference or event and scheduling rooms.
It’s a great concept for a post. People see the title and they’re like, “I don’t want to make mistakes when I’m planning my event…” and they click to read the post.
Again just a couple nitpicks. The headings are great. This breaks up the content. To break up the content even more go with shorter paragraphs. Big blocks of text scare online readers. You get lost in big paragraphs.
But a great concept for a post. The angle is makes and how to avoid those mistakes. That’s what people want.
4. Message About The Industry’s Future
This is a really good post. It’s from the CEO and it provides that expert perspective on the industry. The industry is communication and how that is changing for many people and many organizations.
So here is the formula for this type of post:
1. You provide the update on what’s happening in the industry. You’re an expert and people look to experts for this information and insight.
2. You provide next steps. It’s one thing to say what’s happening. To take it even further you provide actionable insight. That’s what Four Winds has done in this post.
3. You provide the tools. Four Winds does this with their tools and offers a solution.
People love this kind of post. We’re always looking for insight into what’s coming up in the future. We look to the experts for guidance.
5. Featured Images
Earlier we talked about featured posts on the main blog page.
Now to touch on featured images within posts. If you look at a post on Four Winds you’ll see that they have a very large featured image. I think that is okay, but when it comes to those on smaller screens the image can take up more than you might want.
When I look at it on my MacBook Air I can’t see the title at the bottom. So for a moment I’m confused about if I’m on the right page.
But it’s a small nitpick. I like featured images. I think images on posts are a great thing. If you’re considering featured images on your posts and on the main blog page I would say to go ahead and use them.
Final Thought
Four Winds Interactive is in an exciting industry. Digital signage seems like its in infancy. In the future it seems like we’ll all go places and interact with this type of signage. It’s so much better and more helpful and effective than printed signs.
Four Winds is off to a great start with their blog. Obviously I had a couple nitpicks, but those were nitpicks. They have a great opportunity to attract new clients with the blog. They can post on a regular schedule; perhaps weekly. And they can do more of what they’re doing: list posts, how-to posts, etc. Anything that would answer a common target audience question makes for a great post.