I like the way Urban Airship presents their product on their website.
So often, it can be difficult to figure out what a business provides by looking at their website. I think Urban Airship is pretty clear that they help brands with mobile engagement.
And “mobile engagement” could be tricky to understand, but they go into more detail on what it means. They talk about who their current clients are and specifically how they help those companies use apps to engage with customers on a regular basis.
An example would be all the ways Starbucks uses its app to communicate with customers while allowing customers to make purchases and look for information.
So that’s a little background on Urban Airship.
Now, as always, let’s look at what they’re doing with their blogging strategy.
1. Commitment To Consistency
I’m not sure how long Urban Airship has been blogging. It seems like at least for a little while. And they’re really been on a publishing spree the last couple months.
One thing that is important with a blogging strategy is a commitment to consistency. That comes in a few different forms including committing to a schedule. That means publishing on a regular basis.
It means finding a couple forms or types of posts and committing to those while also leaving room for experimenting.
In this world, people like consistency. We like new things, but we like people that we can rely on. And that’s true for blogging as well.
In a small way, a consistent blogging schedule shows a potential client that you’re values include consistency. People like that dependability.
Urban Airship seems committed. It can be tricky to publish more than three times per week and keep it up, but if you can remain consistent with that it’s a good thing.
2. Explaining What Data Means
I’ve talked before about businesses creating their own studies and stats and sharing the information on their blogs. Urban Airship has done that including in the post we’ll look at with this post.
It’s great that Urban Airship is going into some depth on their study. It really helps the target reader, marketers at major brands with apps, to learn about the mobile channel.
But what’s really great and it shows up well in this post is how Urban Airship explains the stats. It’s one thing to share the stats and people want that, but they also want insight into what the stats mean.
The target readers are smart. They will look for their own takeaways, but smart businesspeople also want insight from others. They want to compare their thoughts to other thoughts and learn from experts.
And Urban Airship has a collection of experts on mobile and it’s great that they share their insight.
3. Peek Behind The Scenes
I’ve been noticing this type of post a bit more lately.
It’s a look behind the scenes at Urban Airship. It shows the human side of the brand, which I think is important. People do business with companies, but really they do business with people. That’s really true for B2Bs.
And Urban Airship targets these big brands with apps, but behind those brands are people and it’s important to build relationships online just as you would in real life.
In this post they’re showing an event when the team works on something new. It’s a pretty neat event and it shows part of the culture and a little of the values they have at the company. It makes you want to work with the company if you share those same outlooks and values.
4. Examples & Screenshots
Urban Airship does this in quite a few posts and it’s great. They use examples and include screenshots to share what they’re talking about.
This post isn’t overly long, but not every post needs to be 2,000 words. It’s about answering questions that the target customer is asking. The question in this post would be how to use mobile messaging during the holiday season.
It’s answered in this post complete with examples and screenshots.
And one quick note on timely posts. This one would be a timely post. It’s holiday themed, but I think the message could be used throughout the year and not just during the holidays.
When thinking about blogging it’s important to think a little bit about timeliness, but mostly about how your content will do forever. You want your content to live a long life and be relevant no matter when someone reads it.
Because over time people find your posts in search. That could be a year after you published it. And if you continually share your old posts (recommended) they can discover it that way and it’s easier to share posts that are relevant all year.
But it’s good to mix in some timely posts as well once in a while.
Urban Airship seems to have a good balance.
5. Storytelling
Storytelling can be tricky in blogging. It’s easier to go into lists and keep it pretty general, but if you can weave stories into answering questions that your target reader is asking then you’re really winning at blogging.
I love this post from Urban Airship.
The story is engaging for marketers. You can put yourself in the position of an app user and you can see how it would be exciting to see how this strategy could work for your brand if you work at a big brand like Starbucks.
It’s not easy to do, but if you can observe moments like this one and document them in a blog post it can really connect with your target audience.
Final Thoughts
Urban Airship is really doing some great things with their blog. I love that last post. It’s great storytelling. Again, it’s not an overly long post or a crazy post that follows a bunch of best practices. It’s simply explaining a unique situation and from the story the target reader can pull lessons and implement the strategy.
If you’re looking for an example of a good business blogging strategy then Urban Airship is a good one to emulate.