Trōv looks like a really cool company.
It took me a little digging on their site to figure out what the main offer was, but the entire time it seemed pretty cool.
It seems like the initial use was to catalog all the things you have. And you do this using your phone.
So for me I would use the app to find the descriptions, values and other info for my things including golf clubs, laptop, desk and on and on. We all have things with value and it’s good to 1) know what you have and 2) insure those things in case something happens.
It looks like the insurance part of the app is now coming into the picture, but more on that in just a bit.
As we always do here at GBW, let’s see what this new company is doing to attract their target customers using their business blog.
1. Company Announcements
As I’m writing this post the latest post on the Trōv blog is a company announcement about their exciting insurance option. That’s a pretty exciting announcement and the concept for the app makes more sense with that insurance option.
We discussed before that using a company blog for company announcements makes perfect sense. Company blogs are very often seen as the official source for company information. It’s more difficult for startups, but established companies that are well known often use their blog for company announcements and other online publications will link to the original post when making their own news announcements.
This post is on the shorter side. It’s more of a teaser and a quick announcement of what’s coming. It’s a good reuse of content by embedding the video. And the video kind of explains how it works. A full step-by-step video probably won’t be ready until the product is closer to final. Then a post with some more detail would make sense as well.
This one works really well as a teaser. The excitement comes through.
2. Sidebar Items
The sidebar on a blog is often a place for a few items. You’ll often see a search area so readers can search the archives for content they want. You’ll also often see other archive helpers like a list of categories of posts or the archives listed by date.
You’ll also often see some recommended content like top posts or things like guides and other resources. You might see a video or something that the company wants to promote as a way to continue to earn your trust.
One thing you’ll notice on this blog is that they share their philosophy. That’s something a little different that I don’t think I’ve seen on any other business blogs.
But I really like it. You’ll see the little image under the heading at the top of the sidebar. And it links to an entire page on philosophy.
Often on a business website you’ll find that pages like the About page or Philosophy page are pretty popular. This is because visitors want to get to know the people and culture and the company before they purchase. So it makes sense to include this in the sidebar of a blog because a visitor is likely new to the brand and would be interested in getting to know the people and culture.
3. Commitment To Blogging
At first glance it seemed like Trōv was pretty new to blogging, but they actually have 56 pages of archives. And I think their first post is from July 2013. Now, that’s still certainly a new blog for a new company, but after a little calculating I think that means they’ve been publishing about 5-6 posts per month since July 2013.
That’s definitely a strong commitment to the blog. Anytime you’re committing to around 1-2 posts per week you’re committing to a lot of effort. It might not seem like it, but many business blogs start out strong with that frequency and then fade away until the blog is dead. That’s because it’s hard to maintain even the 1-2 posts per week frequency.
But Trōv has been doing it now for almost three years and that’s impressive. It’s usually about the 1-2 year mark at that frequency when you start to see some bumps in SEO or organic search traffic. And you can dig back into that archive of posts to share and re-share on social media and in email campaigns.
4. Guides or Guide Posts
Longer posts can be really valuable to target readers and Trōv has a really good post on Springtime Organizing from a while back. I really like this post.
It’s pretty long. I would guess that at first glance it’s over 1,000 words. It’s broken down into different segments and it’s all about getting different areas of your life or home organized in the spring. They have segments on closets, garages, bedrooms and more.
These posts often do well when published just before the time comes for people to worry about this activity, but then they’ll still be valuable each year when this time comes around. It’s almost springtime again so reading this post is valuable and I’m sure people are searching for things like “closet cleaning tips” and things like that which could lead the reader to this post.
There are also some great photos in the post. They look like free-use images, which can work great for business blog posts like this one and are free to use. Some require attribution and some don’t. Either way is just fine for a business blog.
5. Targeted Blog Posts
The last point we’ll touch on here is the idea of targeted blog posts. You’ll see a good example with 7 Tech Products Every College Student Needs This Fall.
The targeted part of the post is the “college student”. Trov is looking to bring attract college students to the post and to the blog and to their app by writing about something, a question and answer, the college students would be curious about.
This style of post can be very effective whether you have a few different target customer personas or even if you have a more defined target customer.
With a business blog it’s always good to speak directly to the person you want to read that post. You’ll be more relevant for that person and you’ll also bring in some others that are close to the target reader without matching exactly. So in this case the post would still be relevant to some high school students or young professionals.
Conclusion
Trōv is doing some really great things with their business blog. They publish often and they’ve committed to a consistent frequency since they launched the blog. They’re already ahead of game from that standpoint. They also have a good focus on their target customer and use that focus in their posts. All I can say is that hopefully they keep it up with the blog even during and after their exciting new product launch.