inbound-marketing

52Inbound MarketingBrady adds that another important aspect of the blog is“continuing the conversation through comments from ourreaders. We have an educated customer base and they askexcellent questions, which we answer either in the commentssection or by posting a new blog entry. It’s veryimportant to us that we engage with our readers.” The proofis in the pudding, as they say, as Whole Story is read by tensof thousands of subscribers.The Whole Story team are masters of the soft sell. It isvery hard to acquire subscribers and get lots of other websites to remark about you if your blog is overtly selling yourproducts. Approximately 90 percent of Whole Foods’ blogcontent does not sell their products at all. A great exampleof a soft sell article is one concerning a sheep’s milkcheese called Mons Cazelle de Saint Affrique. Instead of talkingabout the product itself (and why people should buy it)the cheese buyer wrote about the romantic town in whichthe cheese is made, how it’s made, and the people whomake it. The article ends with the following: “Either way it isa fantastic cheese that we are offering you during the monthof April. Welcome spring with a lovely, young cheese fromFrance, and hurry since it may not be around long!” (seeFigure 5.6).To Do1. Set up your blog as blog.yourdomain.com or a“net” new domain (not .blogger.com or .wordpress.com).2. Start creating remarkable content in different flavors(articles, videos, links, guest blogs) with searchfriendly,catchy titles.