At this year’s BlogWorld and New Media Expo, SmartBrief’s Jesse Stanchak spoke with Lisa Grimm, digital public relations specialist for the Mall of America, about how the mall retooled its blog to deliver the kind of content that visitors wanted.
The Mall of America blog didn’t attract much traffic when it launched in 2009, Grimm said. After she joined about a year ago, the company made an effort to track and use metrics to improve the quality of the blog’s content.
Some of Grimm’s key points of Mall of America’s blog reboot:
- Delve beyond the page views. It’s clear that checking which posts get the most hits can illustrate what kind of content is most popular with blog visitors. But Grimm said she uses Google Analytics to look at all kinds of metrics, including when most people are reading the blog (between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., and in the evening), how they get to the blog and how long they stay there.
- Polish your presentation. What’s not an exciting headline: “Interview with author so-and-so.” What is an exciting headline: “Book giveaway.” It’s not just the content you have but how you present it, Grimm says, and factors such as search engine optimization are also important.
- Hire the right people for the right job. Writing skills can be taught, but there isn’t a substitute for passion. Grimm says there’s an emphasis on making sure the right people are on the team and have the guidance they need to succeed.
For more of Grimm’s insights, watch the video:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3DR6yU79P0[/embed]