By Cheryl Salazar, The Partner Marketing Group
Writing and posting blogs on a regular basis is a great way to add content your website – provided it’s on target, done regularly, and is relevant to the other content that is on your website. It’s a great way for you to showcase your expertise and provide insight into the solutions you sell. Sounds good, doesn’t it? So why aren’t you doing it?
What do you write about?
This one concerns almost all of us. Start by gathering your team together for 30 minutes, sitting down and brainstorming ideas. You can easily build a list of topics based on:
- Frequently asked questions the support team receives
- Tips ‘n tricks for product usage
- Questions your prospects ask you
- Industry issues
- Stories about customers and their ERP/CRM challenges (and how you solved them, of course)
Within 30 minutes you should have enough blog topics to last you for at least 3 months, even if you blog weekly.
Who writes them?
Find the person in your organization that likes to write. If you don’t, hire a writer to ghostwrite them for you. Provide the writer with some insight on your company, a list of issues the industry faces, and ensure that he/she creates solid bylines for the people who are ‘authoring’ the blog.
Information sources
You have a list of topics and you have a writer, now where do you get the content? Your information sources are numerous. It may be buried in a pre-sales presentation you already have, a case study you haven’t written up (yet), or a whitepaper you have on your website that you can expand on. Other sources include:
- Association websites
- Retailers may visit the National Retail Federation site for timely information about technology advances, or nonprofits may visit their local association websites and pose questions. These sources leave valuable clues for you to pick up on.
- Industry reports
- Use the First Research reports if you’re focused on creating and delivering industry specific content. The site is rich with industry specific reports that will help you unearth the nuggets of information you’ll need to create great blog content.
- Print or online publications
- When you use these as sources of information make sure you always give credit to them. Citing industry or publication sources lend credibility to your blogging.
Track your blogs regularly to see what is being read. By keeping on top of reader interest it will help you hone your focus and continue to feed your prospects what they’d like to consume.
If you need help getting started, don’t forget that The Partner Marketing Group can help you with your blogging initiatives. Contact us for more pricing.
