It’s no secret that a strong blog can bring a lot of value to a company. Genuine blog content creates relationships between readers and the brand, and insightful information can position your brand to be a leader in its industry. On top of relationship building, blog content is known to drive traffic to your site and improve SEO. In fact, companies with blogs produce on average of 67 percent more leads per month than those without one.
Though it is powerful, blog content can be hard to generate. Custom, well-thought-out articles take time and a lot of thought power. It’s crucial to inspire your employees to create content for your company blog to connect with your target audience.
Think about it: Who works with your products or services every day? Who knows the most about your brand and how to sell it? Who already engages with your consumer audience and knows what they expect from your brand? Your employees! They are a great resource for information that others can obtain through a blog. However, your employees may be hesitant if they don’t know where to start or if they don’t have much experience writing content.
Here are a few ways to inspire your employees to write for your website.
Writing Procedures and Policies
If a writer is not aware of what is expected of them or what route to take, they are going to have a harder time getting started. A set of company-wide procedures and policies can help avoid this unnecessary writer’s block, and they don’t have to be extensive to be helpful.
Highlighting simple literary elements, such as style, tone of voice, and formatting will not only give transparency to your expectations from your employees, but it will also guarantee that all your website content will be uniform, even though it is coming from different writers. Examples may be whether to use to the Oxford comma, if you will write content in first person or third, or what the call to action should be in your blog posts.
Create Outlines and Prompts
While some of your employees may be excited to share their ideas on your website, others may be intimidated by the thought. But just because a person isn’t strong writer does not mean they don’t have good ideas to share.
Have these employees put together an outline that can be passed onto someone who has more passion to write. Create a framework of the article that can be sent to a proficient writer who can turn it into a solid piece of work.
Remind your Employees Their Knowledge is Important
If employees already have a lot of their plate or don’t see the value in a good blog, it can be hard for them to take content creation seriously. Some workers might also feel like they have no insight to give to a reader, which simply isn’t true. It has been reported that 90 percent of consumers find custom content useful, and 78% believe that companies behind content are interested in building good relationships.
Therefore, it is important to remind your employees that they have valuable knowledge worth sharing. Use employee experiences to their full potential by having employees write about personal expertise to create custom content. Not only will you get unique content no one else can provide, but the employee will also feel more comfortable and confident creating copy.
Encourage Friendly Competition
When it comes down to it, we all love to win. If you need content and are looking for a more natural way to inspire your employees to write, consider adding some friendly competition into the mix.
Rewards can be given to the employee who produces the most articles, the writer of the most-read article, the author of the article that generates the shares on social media, and so on. Consider taking the best writer out to lunch each month or having a small cash bonus as a reward.
Develop a Content Strategy
Before you can give your employees prompts to write about, it’s important to first flesh out your content strategy. Need some help? Aztek takes a content-first approach to web design and digital marketing. Our content creation services are focused on establishing the right voice and tone for your brand, driving website visitors, and converting visitors into leads and sales. Contact us today to start a conversation.