Content Strategy: Build a Blogging Team
Let’s face it. It can be really tough for one person to maintain a company blog. No matter how diverse your company’s products and services might be, that blank text editor can start to look like a monster. It is why a large majority of corporate blogs die a quick death soon after they go online.
The lucky person within your company that was handed the task of creating fresh content every day just plain old runs out of stuff to write about. Or loses motivation to write. Or both.
Why?
Because blogging……. IS HARD.
Here’s where I’m going to get about forty emails from bloghards contradicting me. Yes, I already know you blog three times a day, but not everyone can do what you do, OK Skippy? Hop on down to Starbucks and get me a latte while I ’splain to the rest of the group…
It’s a fact, blogging can be difficult. Coming up with new ideas, day in and day out, is a lot harder than it sounds. So in order to combat this, your company needs a blogging strategy. A plan to keep that content you desperately need, flowing.
One way a company or corporation can generate more content is by building a blog team within the ranks. That is, using your employees, as a team, to share the content load for your business blog.
Think about it for a second. Your employees are good at their jobs. Otherwise, they probably wouldn’t work for you for very long. Even though you hate to admit it, they probably even know things about your company, products, or services that even you might not know. At the very least, they might have insights about specific areas of your company that didn’t occur to you. Because they look at these angles more often than you do, Mr. CEO.
They are specialists. Professionals within your company that are quite possibly the very best in your industry. They know stuff. Stuff that can make your blog better. For both your readers, and the search engines. By simply writing about what they know.
An added bonus to creating a blog team within your company is that one person doesn’t have to carry the entire load. Normally this task ends up on the President or CEO’s desk. As the masthead, it is assumed that he or she can write the corporate blog every day. Because as the captain of the ship, they should be able to flip out the qualities of said company till the end of time.
Not so. Just because they are the captain, doesn’t mean they are going to be stellar bloggers. In fact, it might just mean doom for the company blog, because these people are busy. Blogging is likely the last thing on their corporate mind when it comes to daily operations. Just because they are captains of industry doesn’t automatically make them the best candidate to be the internet spokesperson for your corporate blog.
So find the best people instead. By using your staff as a content creating team you’ll soon see who can write and who can’t. You’ll also see an increase in your search traffic, almost like magic. Because they will in fact cover more topics and hit more specific keywords and phrases with the content they produce. Mostly because they will write about what they know. The specific tasks and functions they perform for the company.
With very little effort and cost to you. If you have seven employees and ask them each to write one paragraph a week for the company blog, you have a fresh blog post every single day of the week. With about 15 minutes of their time invested. Ask them to write two posts a week and your blog will become a powerhouse. Three and you’ll be cooking like Emeril Lagasse.
BAM!
Big or small, your company can create the content necessary for your blog to be successful. It just takes planning and a little effort. Recruit within, see what it brings. Who knows, you might just have the next internet personality sitting in the cubicle to your left. 
What do you think?
Post your questions, comments, rants and raves in the comment box below.
Tags: Blog Content, Blog Content Writing, Content Strategies, corporate blog, Team Blog, Team Blogging
October 5th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Great article. Blogging is like a business. We need to have a great strategy and vision to progress on. Having a team is a big advantage that any blogs could have.
October 6th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
In an ideal world what you suggest would certainly spread the load. However, from my experience I have found that if one individual does not take full ownership for the project then nothing gets done.
The Blog Manager (for lack of a better term) should see themselves as a journalist for the company. If they approach the task in this way and are prepared to track down information or ask people for news snippets, in the same way a good journalist would, then the project should stay alive.
October 8th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
I agree with you John, it’s not easy to turn the staff into bloggers and not everyone will be good at it. But some companies are desperately searching for new methods of generating more content for their blogs, thus the suggestion.
I do like your term, “blog manager”. I also think this person should see themselves in that light, as well as kind of a “PR” or spokesperson for the business they blog about. The blog manager really wears several different hats if you think about it.
October 9th, 2008 at 7:37 am
[...] a few days ago, I posted an article about creating a blog content team within your organization. Which started me on a line of thought in regard to using your team [...]