A few months ago, we gave a seminar on business blogging. Throughout the course of the presentation, we covered why companies should start business blogs, how to get started, and how to create content your audience will love. As we discussed each topic, audience members expressed one major concern - time. The quick video and summary below highlight the top 'hacks' Donna says will allow even the busiest marketers to create great content in little time.
What work have you already done? Do you have a brochure that addresses key customer questions? An FAQ page? Pages in a catalog?
What about your sales or customer service department? Because they communicate with prospects and customers every day, their emails may be filled with useful information you can easily adapt into blog posts or longer-form content.
If you have an ebook or whitepaper your team's already written, break it down into shorter blog posts with a call-to-action to download the complete ebook/whitepaper.
Think about how you can creatively repurpose work you or your team have already done.
Put together a guest blog program.
First, make a list of influencers in your industry who may be interested in promoting their own personal thought leadership or company brands (as long as they're non-competitors and their perspectives would add value for your prospects and customers).
Then, if you don't already have one, create a blog "style guide" of sorts. What is the mission of your blog? What type of content do you like to feature? Is there a certain length requirement or limit? Are there rules around what images can be used? Include anything you would want guest bloggers to know about writing on your blog - the more specific you can be, the less editing you'll have to do on the back end.
Lastly, email each of these partners/influencers with an invitation for them to contribute to your blog. Explain what the value would be to them and include the style guide so they know exactly what you're asking for. A great way to reach out to "cold" guest blogging prospects is to tweet them first, guage their interest, and then email them if you get a positive response.
Even one guest blog post per month goes a long way toward reducing your writing workload and can add some great diversity and color to your content.
So many brands are creating amazing content in the form of blog posts and articles, infographics, videos, and even interactive media like games. One way to maximize time when creating new content for your company is to leverage popular and relevant content you see around the web.
You'll want to make sure you have legal permission to share the content, but most of the time brands are glad for the extra promotion of their work. In fact, many times infographic or video content can be embedded into your blog where you can add your own perspective for your audience without whipping up an entire post yourself.