Recent or Relevant? Homepage Blog Feeds

Posted by Joe Jerome on 3/5/15 6:00 AM

homepage-blog-feedAs the world of visual branding and content marketing continue to collide we are seeing resources and blog or RSS feeds become a common part of homepage design. 

Before you jump on putting up your homepage blog feed you need to ask one question. WHY?

Why are you putting it up there? What are you trying to get them to do? Does it fit into the buyers journey?

 

A great homepage will reflect people in different stages of the buyer life cycle. What are the stages of the buyers journey?


According to HubSpot they are Awareness, Consideration, and Decision.

Awareness means that they have realized that they have a potential problem or opportunity.

Consideration is when they know what that problem or opportunity is and are committed to researching it and understanding approaches to solving it.

Decision is when they have it defined and have knoweldge to make informed decisions.


Your decision to post your blog content feed on your homepage should be based on what part of the buyer journey you are targeting.

According to HubSpot the types of content you post in the Awareness Stage are:

  • Analyst Reports

  • Research Reports

  • eGuides

  • Editorial Content

  • Expert Content

  • White Papers

  • Educational Content

Do any of these sound like content typically found in a blog? Blogs content generally falls into one if not many of these content types. You can use your blog articles in the same way you would use any content no matter what it's from.


In addition to the Buyer's Journey your homepage targeting also takes into consideration your buyer persona. It's difficult to target all of the personas on one page so you will need to narrow it down to one or two.


Does it make sense to post your most recent blogs?

If it does than you can stop reading. If you are using the blog to engage more of the right people at the right time you can select the most appropriate posts and place them strategically on your homepage.

The choice you can make is to manually post 2-3 posts on the homepage.


How do you choose the right blog posts for your homepage?

Make sure the blog posts:

  • Address someone who may not know you already - a first time visitor.
  • Speak to your target personas.
  • Address a fundamental problem or opportunity since they are in the Awareness stage.

If you already have content that does this just manually place it on the page. If not make sure you write them just for that purpose.

Are you deciding how you should layout your homepage. We have a guide that can help and you can find it here.

If you are in the process of building a new site and haven't found the answer you can contact me for a 15 minute consult here.

Topics: Homepage

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