Blogging isn’t dead. If anything, social media channels like Twitter and Facebook – and even LinkedIn – have only provided fuel for the fire, allowing you to distribute your blog posts more broadly. Unfortunately, you haven’t had time to write them; you’re a busy marketing director fielding requests for ever-increasing content volumes. You’re actively looking for a way to justify hiring a freelancer to write your blog posts. If any of these fit your situation, add a line item to your budget and get your editorial calendar ready to go.
- You have a giant backlog of customer questions. Seriously, your customer support and sales teams are your best friends. They probably have a ton of questions that they keep getting asked by customers and prospects: what does the XYZ feature do? How does this new dashboard work? Each one of those questions can be turned into a 300-word blog post.
- You have a bunch of white papers that aren’t getting the traffic you want. No one is downloading your white papers. (This is very different than no one reading your white papers.) But you can use your company blog to entice readers, right? Start parceling out that white paper for blog posts, with a call to action at the end of each post.
- Your company regularly attends trade shows. When your sales team is at the booth, or – even better! – an executive from your company is speaking, these both lend themselves to blog posts. You can write about what product you’ll be demo-ing at the booth or write a recap of your exec’s speech. If you have a customer speaking, even better! Get permission from the customer to do a write-up on your blog. You may need to hire an on-site freelancer if you can’t get the slide deck for the presentations.
- You’re anticipating a lot of product questions for a new release. Version 3.0 is going to be so much better than 2.0, and everyone in your company, from the development team to the C-suite, can’t wait to get it in the hands of customers. The only problem is, 3.0 is very different: it has a simpler user interface, or it has more customization features. Your company blog is the perfect place to start explaining some of these features and make the case for the upgrade in the process.
- You need some SEO street cred. You’ve heard from your 21 year old intern, your SEO specialist, and your 13 year old niece that your company’s product is great, your site is awesome – but it’s also competing fiercely for a spot on the first page of Google search results. Google’s latest zoo animal algorithm won’t let you get away with hastily written blog posts. Luckily, you have a list of keywords from your intern and your SEO specialist. Now it’s time to get writing.
If any or all of these apply to your company, it’s time to invest in blog posts. If you’re not using an in-house staffer, make sure you’re hiring someone who can interview your development team if necessary, translate Engineer to English, and write to-the-point posts. Here’s a shortcut: I can do all that. Really. Let’s talk.