I Have Been In Your Shoes

How To Create A Blog Series

I like to say, “I’ve been in your shoes” when I talk with clients about the merits of content marketing and, more specifically, writing posts on a regular basis for a blog series. During my time on “the client side” of home and building products manufacturing, I chased down product managers, building scientists, executives and sales people to write a blog post. It was exhausting. The task of writing is often outside of their comfort zone and easy to reprioritize during the day. Once the post is submitted, we often are reminded that writing well is a skill.

Reason to Persevere

After having the experience of chasing down blog posts a few times, it becomes easy to surrender and deem the effort a lost cause. You ask yourself if people do not want to participate, why go through the effort? The answer is because

1. 80% of your customers and prospects decision makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles versus an advertisement
2. Long-form blog posts generate 9 times more leads than short-form posts
3. Conversion rates are 6 times higher for companies and brands using content marketing than those that are not.

Further, blog posts create personal connections with customers, provide shareable content for the sales and marketing teams to reuse and drives SEO for your website.

Stop The Chase

So how do we stop the chase and consistently produce high quality blog posts? The answer is to enlist a professional team that has been in your shoes, has proven an approach for gathering information and writers to create the blogs on time and complete.

On Your Mark

Our approach is simple and direct. First, we work together with our clients to write a creative overview brief with key components of our writing that is to be consistent with each piece created like brand standards, personality, tone and keywords. This is shared with each writer when the project is assigned.

Get Set

Next, we ask the client to create a list of preferred topics with the subject matter experts we are to interview for the post. These topics can include material types, products, projects and people associated with the any of the former topics. We ask our clients to consider what may be interesting for your customers to read. Asking the people in customer service and sales may give you ideas on topics based on their conversations with customers.

Go!

We interview the subject matter experts to gain the special insights into the topic to share in the post. All of our writers are current or former professional journalists experienced at interviewing and collecting information and insights from the experts. Working with professional writers assures us of quality posts crafted to provide compelling stories. We typically work with several different writers for a blog series to provide a variety in the writing style for the readers. An advantage to working with professional writers is their commitment to delivering the finished pieces on time.

Our approach eliminates the barriers to success you may have encountered previously when taking on this task yourself. As a result, you can provide great content consistently to your customers and team without the exhausting chase.

For The Win

If the convenience and final written product does not convince you to engage a professional content team maybe the fact that content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing will help you make your decision.

We offer a Blog Series to our clients that allow them to create an editorial calendar of professionally written blog posts on a set schedule for promotion. Please send us a note if you are interested in learning more. We are happy to share a couple of our writing samples with you to see what we mean.