In a small company, all employees may share responsibility for contributing blog content. In larger companies, there may be an expectation of content contributions from various teams. In either situation, the production of blog content can be a team effort.
Do Employees Read the Blog?
This should be the first and most important responsibility regarding the blog. Each employee needs to get a feel for the content and how well it expresses the company’s mission statement.
Encourage employees to make notes on what they do and don’t like about the blog. These observations are as important as what random readers may post in response to a blog post.
Create a Blog Team
If your company is large enough, it may make sense to ask for volunteers from each team to meet regularly and form a blog team. Each member will bring the particular focus of his or her team. This also provides the blog team members with the opportunity to have a better understanding of what goes on in different areas of the company.
For a smaller company, perhaps all employees should discuss the blog as part of the company meetings.
If there is no mission statement for the blog, I would recommend going back to the drawing board and creating one. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. Brainstorming a mission statement can be an effective collaborative effort for a team.
One thing that can really bring a blog together in a cohesive way is to create an editorial calendar of topics. Do keep this benchmark in mind: the overall content of a blog should be no more than 20% sales oriented. That means you need to provide 80% interesting content. Ideally, the sales-oriented material should also be interesting and not stick out like an advertisement.
You can organize your calendar by seasons, holidays, or any series of themes that make sense. Every member of the team should be responsible for coming up with ideas.
If the blog is oriented to your industry, it should have stories that affect that industry.
Don’t neglect the personal touch. Customers want to see the people behind the company. If an employee in your company just returned from a photo safari in Africa, that might make an interesting post. Ask yourself if a story is likely to appeal to a general audience.
In general, it’s probably best to avoid listing marriages and births. However, if an employee in your company has received a significant award for an act of courage or good citizenship, do report it. Any employee news that demonstrates the diversity or civic involvement of the company is worth reporting.
Inspiring quotations always make an interesting blog post if they’re not overdone. Have a collection available. Look at quote sites, like seachquotes.com and others.
Meet to Evaluate the Blog
This is crucial. Everyone who participates in working on the blog should be reading the comments carefully—and, of course, responding thoughtfully.
Working from internal and external sources of feedback, the people on the team can figure out if they’re on track, especially if they’re fulfilling the blog’s mission statement. If they need to correct course, they can have a brainstorming session about how to accomplish this.
The most important thing is to keep the spirit of this discussion collaborative and cooperative.
A company blog is one of the faces the business shows the world. When the work on it is well organized with a team approach, it can also help to bring the diverse elements of the organization together.
Pat Iyer is a C Suite Network Contributor, one of the original 100 contributors. She has written over a thousand blogs since 2009. As an author, editor and ghostwriter, Pat helps her clients share their brilliance without having to do all of the work. Reach her at WritingToGetBusiness.com.