You’re responsible for your company blog, you develop the content strategy and plan the editorial calendar. Do you find there are a lot of dates filled in with your name as the writer assigned to the post? The content doesn’t have to all come from the marketing department. In fact, some of the most widely read business blogs include contributions from multiple people across the business or subject matter experts aligned with the company.

Here are five ways to motivate your co-workers and get more people involved writing for your company blog.

1. Invite the sales team to a content planning session.

Your sales people talk with people interested in your product or service everyday. A great place to plan blog topics is by getting your sales team to collectively list the top ten questions they are asked in the sales process. Then ask each sales rep to answer one or more of the questions (depending on the size of your team) and to write a post on the answer or solution to each question. Often this becomes some of the most valuable content on your blog. You may have to edit their contributions, but this gives you quality content to help educate your prospects on your offering. It also helps to align the sales and marketing efforts.

2. Use the interview technique.

Many marketing managers run into a roadblock when executive level contributors don’t have time or won’t take the time to write for the company blog. How to get around this problem is to interview the subject matter expert. Tell your CXO that you are going to set up a 30 minute meeting once a month. Be prepared and write your questions in advance and record your conversation. This should give you plenty of direction to write the post for them. It will be much easier to get an internal expert to edit the article vs. starting from a blank page.

3. Throw a party.

Who doesn’t like pizza and blogging? Seriously this does work when upper management is committed to your inbound strategy. Pick an extended lunch hour or an hour at the close of business, bring in the food and get as many team members as possible to write a post. You can kick start the process by providing topic ideas in advance of the blog party.

4. Have an internal contest.

This can be a stand alone promotion or an extension of the blog party. Motivate your team by having a contest and award fun prizes prizes based on the results. Award employees based on blog posts that bring in the most visitors, convert the most leads and award a special prize for the post that converts the most customers. 

5. Use group tools to share topic ideas.

We keep a working copy of our editorial calendar on Google docs so that multiple people can access it and contribute to it. Other project management tools like Basecamp help keep team members on track with publishing timelines and individual assignments.

Your blog can be one of the most valuable assets in your marketing mix. The benefits are well worth the effort. 

Our new ebook “Guide to B2B Blogging” defines 30 activities to help you improve your business blog grouped in these categories:

• Planning
• Developing
• Converting
• Promoting
• Measuring & Improving