There used to be a time when corporate communications were not created with clients, customers or the public in mind. Prior to the advent of web-based blogging software, most companies limited their interactions with consumers and clients via impersonal channels such as public relations, marketing and customer service.
Although blogging started in the mid-1990s, it took a few years for the business world to catch on to this important media channel. It wasn’t until after platforms such as Live Journal and Blogger took hold that magazines and newspapers launched the first blogs for commercial purposes.
The first business blogs were sales-driven affairs that mostly missed the mark in terms of what the public wanted to see, which is interesting, candid, honest, casual, and clever communication from companies. The public does not wish to deal with faceless corporations anymore.
We live in an era of meaningful engagement; customers want to know more about the companies they get their goods and services from, and they want to learn from those who are closely associated with these business entities.
Business blogging can straddle the line between diary and marketing. Generating the quality content that your clients and customers want can be accomplished with the assistance of your staff, but getting your team members to contribute to the company’s blogging effort can be a challenge in the beginning.
No matter what industry or line of business your company is in, your clients and customers deserve quality content, and the best people who can accomplish this task are your executives, managers, supervisors, and associates. If you or your team are not experienced with blogging, getting started can be challenging in terms of finding ideas and producing content; however, the return on investment of this activity is worth every effort.
Here are six tips to help you in getting your staff involved with content creation:
1 – Choosing Blog Topics
If your company has never kept a blog, the first step is to select a blogging platform. To this effect, you should evaluate blog-oriented content management systems (CMS) such as WordPress or Drupal. The next step is to formulate a content marketing strategy; this is something that you can do with your PR, marketing or SEO personnel.
The next step involves choosing the right topics to present to your team. This aspect of blogging can seem a bit daunting to those who are not used to creating content; after all, there are millions of topics that have already been tested and developed by your competitors over the years.
You can start getting ideas by reviewing topics being discussed by other companies on their blogs and social media platforms. Once you have come up with potential topics, present them to your team and ask them to provide some topics of their own. You want to discuss many ideas with your team so that a long list can be made; the next step is to ask members of your team to sign up for the topics they will create blog posts about.
2 – Encourage Creativity
After presenting your team with the blog topics that they would to write about, your next step should be to motivate your team members to get creative. You will likely run into objections from some team members who feel that writing is not their strong suit; one way you can motivate them is to assign a person as blog editor so that the writing is always polished. You could even retain the services of a professional content author or marketing expert for this purpose.
Be sure to give your would-be bloggers time to work on their posts. You should also think about offering incentives to reward the blogging efforts and of your team, particularly when they produce blog posts that resonate with your intended audience.
3 – Identifying Blog Writers
If you find specific employees whose writing you consider to be easy to read and appealing, you could personally approach them with a blog proposal. An ideal business blogger would be one who is passionate about what he or she does for a living, or at least someone who shows interest in providing meaningful commentary to clients.
Some of the best business blog writers are those who stand to directly benefit from producing a post. For example, if you own a used car dealership and one of your salespeople is a big fan of Ford Mustangs, you could encourage her to write a short memoir of her very first experience with one of these classic sports cars.
4 – Stand Ready to Be a Guide
You should either become familiar with blogging strategies or retain a content producer to work with your team and provide support in the form of outlines, templates, ideas, and editing.
Most content outlines establish the intended word count, tone, topic, narrative flow, paragraphs, and call to action. If you are working with SEO experts, the outline or template may also include keywords and other elements that will optimize the page, but you should only mention this when your blog writers feel comfortable enough.
5 – Offering Incentives
Be sure to mention the goals that the company has in mind with regard to blogging; you should also explain how the company will benefit from this activity. Furthermore, you want to take things further by introducing an incentive plan for outstanding bloggers, and there are a couple of ways you can accomplish this.
Monetary incentives tend to be effective; you can offer a bonus to the blog post that your team votes as being of the highest quality. Another incentive would be to allow blog writers a paid day off so that they can concentrate on their blogs; you can either ask them to write the blog posts working from home or bring them to the office to be reviewed after a three-day weekend.
6 – Provide Results and Feedback
If you are working with SEO or content marketing professionals, ask them to provide your with analytics reports that show the impact of business blogging. This is a very important step that you must share with your team as it is one of the greatest tools in terms of feedback.
Feedback sessions using analytics reports can be augmented with gamification elements attached to certain metrics such as lead generation, sales and social media engagement. Showing your team results of their blog writing efforts is a natural way of empowering them and making them feel a more important part of the team.
In the end, you should approach business blogging as being a part of the Theory Y of management, whereby employees feel that their work is part of something greater. If you can get your team members to become proficient blog writers, your company will certainly reap the benefits of this self-marketing effort while your employees reap personal rewards that make them feel a greater connection to their jobs.
Jill Phillips
Latest posts by Jill Phillips (see all)
- 6 Ways to Inspire Your Employees to Start Blogging - April 4, 2017
Recent Comments