3 Secrets To Get Employees Blogging For Your Business

Why Your Business Blog Is A Team Sport

Get Employees Blogging For Your BusinessYour company’s blog is the link that brings the different aspects of your business together for your target audience.

Your business blog must be integrated with the rest of your marketing – content, social media, PR, sales, customer service and investor relations. That’s why your business blog is a team sport.

Getting your employees blogging for your business may not be a happening event.

Business blogging advice: Do as much as you can with the resources you have.

Blogging is a long-term strategy to support and grow your business. As your business blog gains traction and shows how it helps employees succeed at their jobs, your colleagues will be more willing to blog and participate.

3 Secrets to get employees to blog for your business

To get more people in your organization to blog and participate here are 3 secrets:Get Employees To Blog For Your Business-Heidi Cohen

  1. Make employees into super stars. Everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame (although in the post-Andy Warhol era, it may be 15 seconds.) The biggest factor: Make them look great. Give them the support to write, optimize and publish so they look good to their family, friends and social connections.
  2. Reduce employee workload. Show co-workers that blogging will help decrease their workload. Answer the common product and service questions once on your blog and then all they have to do is link to the information. (As a by-product, you’ll get more people to your blog.)
  3. Contribute to employees’ projects. Who doesn’t want help getting stuff done? Use your blog to assist colleagues by creating content and promoting their projects. Pool your resources. Use the blog to extend the other big projects in your company. It makes everyone look good.

Download The Ultimate Blogging Checklist

 

10 Tactics to make your business blog a team sport

Here are 10 super easy tactics to get everyone in your organization involved in your business blog. Get Employees Blogging For Your Business

1. Fill the content holes from your corporate content marketing audit

Your blog is a great place to create content that’s missing within your firm.

Actionable Business Blogging Tips:

  • Create list of blog posts as part of your content audit. Don’t assume that the need for new content will magically make it from your content audit to your blogging editorial calendar. Include keyword phrases too.
  • Assign the missing content creation to the appropriate resource. Go one step further. Put the content on someone’s official to do list or it may not get done.

2. Tap into internal experts

Edelman Trust Barometer research showed that people trust internal experts, especially where technical products are involved. Customer Trust Factors

Actionable Business Blogging Tips:

  • Remove content creation barriers. I can’t tell you how many people ask me about how to get internal experts involved. Let experts use whatever format works for them. It can be audio, video, presentations or photographs.
  • Ask company experts to keep a list of questions they get asked. These inquiries can come from other employees, customers, distributors, suppliers or peers. Check Quora and LinkedIn for ideas.

3. Develop corporate thought leadership

Encourage your firm’s top thought leaders to contribute to your business blog. Don’t assume that it’s necessarily your c-suite.

Focus on the people in your company who have the expert knowledge that customers and the public seek. Research shows that this is particularly important post-purchase for B2B customers. Post-Sales Content Importance for B2B-2014-eMarketer-Chart

Actionable Business Blogging Tips:

  • Help thought leaders brainstorm post ideas. Face it, we all need a sounding board to get feedback on our ideas.
  • Ask your social media followers for the questions they want answered. This is a great way to encourage social media engagement.

4. Extend major marketing and other business initiatives

Leverage your blog to share different insights into your major marketing projects. Top Rank’s Lee Odden is an expert at this. For his epic curated content, he also creates a series of blog posts. Audience Development for Content Marketing eBook #CMWorld-2-1-2-1Related Content Creation-2

Actionable Business Blogging Tips:

  • Take advantage of photo shoots and other content creation. Get behind the scenes posts, photographs and video.
  • Ask participants to help you. Interview participants via email. I use this method for the Actionable Marketing Guide Book Interviews.

5. Capture customer questions

This should be a no-brainer. It’s the Marcus Sheridan, “They ask, you answer” approach. (It’s also one of the 5 basic content types prospects seek.)

The Big Win: Link to your website product pages to support purchase.

Actionable Business Blogging Tips:

  • Ask prospects to submit their questions. Use your blog, website and social media. Create a special email address that’s viewed at least daily so prospects’ question don’t go unanswered.
  • Have customer service and sales blind copy a member of your blog team every time they respond to a customer request or question. This provides the basic information for blog posts while reducing employee effort. In the future, all they have to do is link to the post.

Download The Ultimate Blogging Checklist

 

6. Spotlight employees, customers and fans

Give customers and social media followers a chance to shine on your blog. Your employees can use this post to engage customers and give them some personal stardom.

This isn’t a new idea. Gini Dietrich does a version of this every Friday on Spin Sucks. She’s admitted that it’s one of her best performing topics. The interview has evolved from Twitter followers to thought leaders. Get employees involved in blogging for your business- interview example

Actionable Business Blogging Tips:

  • Ask your fans to participate. Create a questionnaire to send to employees, customers and fans. Let them know that you’ll edit the content and make sure that you get their permission to use it. Also get their photo and permission to use that as well.
  • Use a fun title. Take a page from Gini Dietrich. She calls her thought leader column “The Spin Inquisition”.

7. Re-imagine content from non-marketing areas of your company

Like dinner leftovers no one wants, you can’t just republish content that resides in the various areas of your business or is outdated.

Instead follow Ann Handley’s “Give your content wings” advice. Re-imagine content that’s no longer relevant or that exists elsewhere in your firm, such as product manuals. Transform this information into engaging blog posts.

Key Benefit: You’re not creating blog content from scratch so it’s faster and cheaper to develop.

Actionable Business Blogging Tips:

  • Ask each department to list the content they create. Don’t just limit yourself to marketing and social media.
  • Check content that’s no longer relevant based on your content audit. Brainstorm how to revise it to make it blogworthy.

8. Go behind your company scenes

People love to see how things are created.

Create “Behind the scenes” photographs, interviews and video to give your readers the feeling of being on a special tour of your firm.

Actionable Business Blogging Tips:

  • Talk to every employee in your business. Be open-minded. Approach each department with an outsider’s perspective. Don’t limit yourself to executives!
  • Be careful not to divulge company secrets. Having assessed firms for purchase for private equity firms, I know that what you think exists, may not. Be sure you’re not giving away trade knowledge.

9. Gather company stories

In their book, Made To Stick, the Heath brothers point out that people remember stories. Extend this idea to your blog.

Asking employees, suppliers, distributors and customers to share their stories about the business and themselves for your blog.

Actionable Business Blogging Tips:

  • Encourage employees to participate. Create a contest for the best stories or feature the employee in your newsletter.
  • Check your company files. Repurpose old newsletters and magazine articles.

10. Capture employees at events

Extend your live event content. Develop one or more blog posts from the presentations your employees make.

Get employees who attend conferences and events to blog about them. This promotes your participation at major events and conferences.

Actionable Business Blogging Tip:

  • Incorporate conference presentations and attendance into your blog editorial calendar. Don’t miss these opportunities.

Download The Ultimate Blogging Checklist

 

The bottom line: Business blogging is a team sport.

Use these 10 tactics to get your employees to blog for your business.

The biggest hurdle: Providing the resources (creative, editorial and technical) to ensure your employees, customers and fans shine when their content appears on your business blog.

What other ideas do you have to get employees blogging?

Happy Marketing,
Heidi Cohen


 

 

Photo Credit: Team sport: http://www.morguefile.com/archive/display/765894 and Secret: http://www.morguefile.com/archive/display/897454

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