Solve Your Content Crisis: Idea #1
I'm going to help you solve your content crisis over the next few posts.
Many businesses either start out and fail, or never start at all on a content marketing strategy because they get stuck on sourcing credible and, more importantly, valuable content. I'm here to tell you that you can Humanize your Marketing, drive more leads and grow your business by following these simple Corporate Blogging Strategies.
The First thing you have to do is think of your blog as the Hub of your content marketing strategy. Blogs are the only repository where every speck of content your organization produces is welcome. Not all content is "Twitter-worthy" or "Facebook-worthy"...but I challenge anyone to tell me of content that isn't "Blog-worthy"
Most organizations are overflowing with great content. Most marketing folks are just not looking in the right places.
So lets begin with Overlooked Content Source number one: Employee Bloggers.
I'm starting here because this is the most obvious yet most overlooked.
Look, you hire smart people, you let them talk on the phone and send emails...you let them actually talk to customers and prospects. Even if you didn't, lets assume they like their jobs, think they are doing interesting work, care about the products or services you offer etc...
Let them Blog! When an employee comes through your door you give them their email address, you give them their phone extension and you give them their blog login credentials. The above is a not-very-good screenshot of email marketing company ExactTarget. ET basically permits all of their employees to blog and a great many of them do. Smart people talking about what's happening in the industry, the problems they are solving, how they think about the industry and fun stuff going on within the organization. This is empowerment with a capital E. People are much more loyal and productive when they feel like they are respected and contributing.
Check out this great post by one of our developers...some one I affectionately think of as an introvert. You wouldn't traditionally think of him first when contemplating a Content Curation Strategy, but he's smart, thoughtful and interesting nonetheless.
Ok, so you might be looking at the ET blog and saying "But that's B2B". Well employee blogging works great in a B2C environment too. Take this above example from Sears. They actually have a blog button on their in-store employee kiosks. When an employee sells a dishwasher or something they can simply click on the blog button and the system automatically pulls up a text box for them that includes a picture of the dishwasher and the store address for Geo-targeting. All the employee has to do is tell the story of why Mrs. Johnson bought the Dishwasher.
Keep in mind that you must have some kind of workflow layer for employee blogging to work. You can't let every thought or idea go live without some filter where you can edit, add appropriate links etc....
So many companies rely on 'policies" with employee bloggers. The problem with counting on policies is that you can only address a problem after the fact. Get a system with built in workflow and prevent problems in the first place.
Keep going! Click through for Solve Your Content Crisis: Idea #2....
