Dog Blog & Marketing Stuff

So mum tells me that when you humans go shopping that most of you only take about 3 to 5 seconds to make up your mind what you are going to pick up when you are standing at a section of the shelf. Wow mum…. that is not a lot of time pondering which food or treats to buy me. So that had us wondering how long people spend deciding once they have clicked through to a blog whether they shall investigate further… hmmm???

When buying my stuff at the shops what usually counts is:

i) Comprehension. Can mum easily read what is on the packaging and what are the main messages on the packaging?

ii) The brand. Is it a brand mum has heard of before and is what they have said relevant to us?

There are other things that come into play but these are the ones we thought were most relevant when we think about what this would mean to the world of blogging.

Thinking about our personal experience we click through to plenty of blogs but really only engage in a few. So how do these ideas of Comprehension and Brand fit into blogging.

Firstly comprehension. Well if you are just browsing and it is all too hard… you just walk back out. Picture you are buying a new lead. You go to the shop and all the leads of different materials, lengths and designs are all jumbled up in one big bin. Don’t know about you but ALL TOO HARD. Well it is kinda the same if you are looking to see if it is a blog you might want to read. If it is all messy and not easy to see what the main theme is than it is all too hard. You might read the start of one post and then walk away if that doesn’t interest you and it is too hard to understand what the broader theme is about. Mum seems to love headers for this reason (and hence you will see this growing on our blog as mum organises the posts into groups so anyone who pops by can easily see the type of things we chat about…. and also so mum can find them again.

The other thing is branding. Such a big scary marketing word but if you are a blog that wants to interact with brands (that is be a commercial blogger) than you are a brand in your own right. A logo is one element of that but it is all of the touch points that someone comes into contact with via your blog. Like personality (blog voice) which we chatted about before, the branding also includes things like other blogs you link to and from. Think like you are down the dog park and you are hanging with all the tough looking staffies with studded collars (it’s ok I know staffies are big softies but just work with me on this). The expectation from a new dog coming into the park is you are a bit of a tough pup. This might be different from if you were chasing the ball with the kelpie.

As you read 1st World Dog we are not putting ourselves up as a blog that has this stuff right at the moment. In fact as we are writing this we are thinking of what we can do to improve (especially the comprehension stuff so mum can find posts again and we just have a basic wordpress template). With time these are things that we will work on but in the meantime we love checking out what others do. One of our favs that we find really easy to understand what is there and navigate around plus it just looks gorgeous is Pretty Fluffy.  We are working our way through reading more and more of this blog but love the recipes (some inspiration for Foodie Friday) and also the Dogs of the Blogs (every good blog needs a dog!).

Hope you enjoyed this week’s Monday Marketing Stuff. If you want Monday Marketing Stuff and other 1st World Dog updates straight to your inbox than just follow us with the bottom over on the side. Or you can keep up to date with other 1st World Dog happenings by check out my Facebook or Instagram pages.

But oh this marketing stuff is exhausting.