Content marketing. It is the new darling of marketing AND it is the method organizations are relying on to build online relationships. Blogs, tweets, e-books, case studies, infographics, white papers – all of these digital assets are being created to share information, educate and entertain prospects, customers and partners.
And it’s working. According to a Hubspot benchmark survey of 7,000 businesses, companies that blog at least 15 times per month generate 5 times more traffic than those who blog less than 4 times per month.
Keeping Up
For large organizations with bigger budgets, shifting marketing dollars to ensure a steady stream of content has been a strategy that most have embraced. Some do it well. Delivering content that is interesting, relevant and timely. Others struggle to get it right with assets that are weak, fluffy or thinly disguised brochure-ware. In some cases, blogs are started and stopped – a no-no in blog world. Consistency is one of the keys to attracting what you want – an audience that continues to return for more.
Rhythm and Discipline
I operate a small business myself so I get how challenging it can be to develop a rhythm and remain consistent. I must confess that because I ghost-blog for so many clients, I am less disciplined with my own blog postings – but I am a tyrant with my customers – ensuring that they establish and maintain a monthly calendar of themes, dates, contributors and postings.
Secrets to Success
One of the secrets is to schedule a monthly meeting with the “editorial team”. These can be both internal and external resources, but putting this on the calendar and keeping it as a “never-move” priority is critical if you want to ensure content is created on time.
The meeting can be short – in fact it should be short. It is simply to agree on topics, assign responsibilities and deadlines, and confirm the editorial and review process. You should always be running at a minimum 4 weeks ahead. This ensures 4 weeks of content “in the bank” at all times, ready to post for you to stay on top of things. By sharing out the tasks across a broad team of contributors and knowledge workers, it makes it easier to pull content together and distribute it regularly.
Write Once – Reuse Often
Blog postings are wonderful opportunities to demonstrate thought leadership, share ideas, develop an on-line voice and personality, attracting potential buyers. If you have more than one contributor, you can develop multiple online personalities that can appeal to different audiences or types of customers and prospects.
But ideally, your blog posting should be surfaced more often than simply posted on your website. Consider the following uses:
- Feature your blog(s) in a monthly newsletter that you send out to customers/prospect;
- Create 30 original tweets and schedule them to run daily for a month, pointing new readers back to your blog and your site;
- Create an e-Book of “The Best of our Blog” and make it a downloadable asset that can also be featured on LinkedIn, Twitter or on your website;
- Self-publish the e-Book and give it away at trade shows or industry events.
Summary
The new buyer wants to educate themselves. That means you need to begin your relationship with them long before you know who they are. Blogs are a wonderful way to showcase your personality, demonstrate thought leadership and build an online connection with someone who might be an idea consumer of your product or service. Find multiple ways to surface your blogs so that readers can find you.
You can adopt this strategy with a small amount of time and money so it is ideal for small businesses but requires discipline to make it work.
Give your blogs the credit and respect they deserve – it is quite likely they will respect you right back.