4 Time-Saving Ideas To Make Your Company Blog Work For You
May 14, 2012 by Eric Taubert
From Fortune 500s to small neighborhood restaurants, businesses of all stripes and sizes are successfully using frequently updated blogs to increase brand awareness, attract new business, disseminate important announcements and forge deeper bonds with clients.
If you happen to be the individual responsible for authoring fresh blog content, then you already know what a time-consuming process managing a company blog represents.
That’s precisely why it’s so important to assure that you’re exploiting all available resources in ways that save you time -- and help you grow your business.
Here are 4 Time-Saving Ideas To Make Your Company Blog Work For You:
1 - Feature Your Brand Champions
Who are your brand champions? The ones who always reply to your Facebook status updates. The ones who always leave comments on your company blog posts. The regulars, the contest winners, the retweeters, the “thank you” letter writers -- you know who they are.
These individuals want a relationship with your company. This is your chance to give them the recognition and exposure they deserve.
Reach out to them. Shoot them an email with a few questions about their relationship with your business. Tell me a little about yourself - where are you from - what do you do? How did you first hear about our business? What do you like most about our products or service?
Their answers represent valuable market research for your company and easily configured content for “Featured Client” blog posts -- which just so happen to also perform as highly visible testimonials for your business.
Make sure you ask for headshot photos to accompany the text...faces help provide an approachable context to the answers you’ve been provided - making them more real.
2 - Repurposed Content
Surely the company blog isn’t the only work you do. What other projects are you working on? What content are you creating for use in another part of your business that you can get double value out of on your blog. Text you’ve written. Photos or videos you’ve taken, or have access to.
Are you doing lots of work, but not creating any content suitable for a blog post? You can solve that problem with a couple smartphone snapshots and some quick writing. Turn your normal everyday activity into a “behind the scenes” blog post. Your clients will love the exclusive look inside the engine of your business - and, because the topic is already second nature for you, your writing will flow much faster.
3 - Guest Blog Posts
Take your tedious blog-writing work and turn it into something of value for someone else -- by letting them author a guest blog post.
The world is full of entrepreneurs looking for opportunities to get their words (and links) in front of new sets of eyeballs.
Who are your strategic partners? Who are the thought leaders you interact with through social media? How can their unique experience be put to use in creating value for your blog readers, showcasing your business from a new perspective and creating a win-win synergy between your business and theirs?
4 - Crowdsourced Community Content
The social media audience of your business contains individuals with knowledge, insight and skills you’ll never know about...unless you ask.
Do a poll. Do a survey. Ask for images or video. Ask for drawings or paintings. Unleash the creativity of your social media audience - and let them shine. Then use the crowdsourced content for new blog posts...always giving credit where credit is due.
Want to know how to get your fans to share your status updates and blog posts with their family and friends? Everyone likes to spread the word when they’ve been mentioned or published. Showcase some of their creativity and watch your shares, retweets and pageviews jump.
What are some of your favorite time-saving blogging strategies? Join Pomegranate on Facebook or Twitter and let us know!
-- written by Eric Taubert
