A corporate blog is often a foundation for any successful content marketing program. The blog itself can be an insightful resource for your current and prospective customers, provide material and ideas for repurposed content, and increase site traffic. The benefits of spreading the blogging responsibilities across the entire organization can be crystal clear, but often times it may be challenging to keep motivation high, especially for those outside of the marketing department.
Here are some essentials that have driven results in our corporate blogging program.
Put one individual in charge of the blog
The blogging administrator encourages all bloggers to consistently participate in and communicates any news about the blogging program. Essentially, the blogging administrator:
Develops the overall plan
Gets buy-in from the CEO or president of the company
Works with the other employees on meeting their goals.
Hold regular training sessions
New marketing efforts that encompass the entire organization typically begin with some training, but the training shouldn’t end there. It is important to have additional training sessions throughout the year to keep your bloggers comfortable. Key training topics may include:
Keyword research
Target audience personas
New technology
New topics/ideas for blogging
Share the results on a regular basis
Continually remind everyone of the impact and progress of your corporate blogging program. A regular report can keep the importance of blogging top of mind and hold everyone accountable. OpenView has set up its corporate blogging program so that almost every blogger is required to submit a blog post each week. As a result, we send an email every Friday that shares the following information:
Critical blogging statistics such as the number of page views, unique visitors, click through rates, and amount of search engine traffic, among others
Number of page views per blogger to help accountability and highlight bloggers that are doing well (and not so well)
Number of target posts per quarter or year per person versus the actual number of posts per quarter or year
Update on the rankings of our targeted keywords
Number of new leads or leads converted
Hold retrospectives or progress reviews throughout the year
A regular meeting outside of your training meetings either with the entire organization or representatives from each department could also boost motivation. This sort of meeting can help identify issues and ultimately shape future training sessions to improve the program overall. During the meeting, the blogging administrator should lead the discussion around the following questions:
Are the topics of the posts relevant to your business objectives?
Are you seeing a gradual increase in visitors, page views, and time spent on the site?
Does the design quality of your blog reflect your company’s culture and style?
Are your bloggers formatting their posts correctly to engage the audience?
Are you using the best keywords possible to attract traffic through search engines?
Are your blogs optimized for search engines to the fullest potential?
What is your Google ranking for each of your targeted keywords?
Do you have an effective strategy for releasing content regularly and consistently?
Are you marketing your blog in the best ways possible (social media, influencers, newsletters, etc.)?
Are your bloggers truly writing to your target personas?
Tap into your employees competitive side and hold a contest
I have written about blogging contests on CMI before, but when it comes down to it, contests are always a great way to boost motivation and excitement. I have previously shared an idea for a weekly contest before so here is an idea for a monthly contest:
Keep track of the number of page views each blogger has every week, which bloggers land in one of the top three spots each week, and the number of posts each blogger writes throughout the month. The three bloggers with the most page views and most posts wins.
If you decide to hold a contest like this every month, determine an appropriate prize. Some examples could be a bottle of wine, a Kindle, an afternoon off, or a free lunch.
Just a quick note: You may consider having a blogging contest every month until motivation and excitement remain high.
Do you need more tips for running a successful blogging initiative? OpenView Labs has packaged a complete guide to help all companies start a corporate blogging program (Note: This requires registration). This eBook includes an introduction to corporate blogging, checklists and quick start guides for each person responsible for kicking off a successful blogging initiative. The eBook features unique tips from content marketing experts Ann Handley, Jonathan Kranz and Joe Pulizzi. Get your copy today by visiting OpenView Labs.
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