1.    Plan your blog content in advance 

Once you have successfully introduced a blogging culture to your employees and you have several people contributing good quality blog posts, your blog administrator will need to plan and organise your blog posts to maximise their effectiveness over a longer period.   

If appropriate try splitting your staff into 5 teams, one for each day of the week.  Each team will be charged with producing one good quality blog post each week, on the same day each week.  The team can be left to decide amongst themselves what their topic will be each week but they should be encouraged to track other relevant blogs to see what  ‘hot topics’ are being discussed online at the moment. 

You blog administrator can also give the teams some direction regarding topics based on his / her knowledge of any seasonal factors which might influence  your customers buying cycle.  

2.    Create a blogging contest for your teams 

For businesses with smaller staff numbers, inter-team competitions are another excellent way get all your staff involved in your business blog.  Just divide your staff into two teams,  being part of a bigger team no-one needs to feel left out and competitions will help all your staff feel ‘engaged’ with the blogging process. 

You can decide what your five daily blog topics for the week will be.  Each team can be asked to produce a blog for each topic and the team who has the most posts selected for publication will win the competition. 

By doing something like this everyone will have a much better understanding of what the company is looking to communicate to its customers and prospects via the business blog.  The competition will also get your employees excited about blogging and as a bonus, if the general quality of all the posts is good you may well have a ‘stock’ of excellent quality blog posts that you can use in the future. 

3. Always write for your target audience 

Before you even make your first blog post you need to be sure you fully understand who your target audience is.  What language do they use?  What are they interested in? What influences their buying decisions? 

Always think about the people who you want to read your posts.  What do they want to read about?  What will retain their interest?  What are their pain points?  What problems can you solve for them? 

If you cannot answer these questions yourself ask your staff, the people who talk most frequently with your customers.  Failing that ask your customers themselves. 

4.    Market your blog!

Just by getting all your staff involved in your business blog,  you are helping to promote it.  They are likely to tell all their family and friends about it and this is one of the best social networks of all!  There are, however, several other things you can and should do to promote your business blog and we will be sharing these with you in our fifth post in this series, tomorrow. 

If you would like to know more about successful business blogging please leave a message below or visit WSI IMS – WSI Internet Marketing Services for UK Businesses.