by April Williams

It takes a team to write great content. But how? Here are key steps to making it easy to get everyone involved at your company.

Writing content is a team sport and a win-win for your company and your team.

In today’s world of marketing, content marketing is the way to go… But if you are like me, your very next thought is Holy Crap – How on earth are we going to commit to producing all the content we need to keep this engine going?

Breathe. With a little planning it is not as hard as it seems.

You Need a Team.

First and foremost – you can not do this alone.

I fought this for a while. I’d tell myself things like:

• Not everyone is a great writer

• The team is too busy

• What about our brand tone and messaging

….And the excuses kept growing.

But when I saw this stat from Hubspot’s State of Inbound Marketing:

“Increasing your publication cadence directly leads to greater customer acquisition. 82% of marketers who blog daily acquired a customer using their blog, as opposed to 57% who blog on a monthly basis.”

This is when it clicked. If I wanted to see content marketing’s true impact, the only way to do this was to embrace that content marketing is, and must be, a team sport.

As soon as I understood this – I felt a lot better about the road ahead.

Because for me and my personality, I loved playing team sports. In fact, looking back, I love team sports way more than the individual sport I played.

I love the camaraderie, the strategy and collaboration and knowing that it wasn’t just about my performance and that others would be working with me for the win.

So if you want to truly get the impact of content marketing and lean on your team to help you get it done, here are 3 things you need to get started.

Step One: Draft Your Key Players

Identify a handful of folks who you will start to position as your company’s Subject Matter Experts (SMEs).

Help them to understand why this is good for the company brand, good for their individual work goals and good for their professional growth.

Good for the company brand:

Here are some great stats from the Content Marketing Institute that will help you have the necessary conversations with your team:

• Content marketing generates more than three times as many leads as traditional advertising methods — and costs 62% less. (Source: CMI)

• 6 out of 10 consumers are inspired to check out a product after reading useful and relevant content about it. (Source: Demand Metric)

• Companies that regularly update their blogs generate 55% more website visitors. Likewise, they receive 97% more inbound links and 434% more indexed pages. (Source: IMPACT)

Good for their individual work goals:

Helping your team members understand how this affects them specifically with their area of the business is another great way to get a team member to buy-in.

For someone in sales, you might explain how having them generate content that would be of interest to a prospect helps them get more qualified leads with less chasing on their part.

Or if someone is an engineer at your company, their content would help prospective clients understand your product offerings’ benefits – driving in more business for them to work on.

Good for their professional growth:

Authoring content allows your team members to become known as thought leaders in their area of expertise. It is vitally important that if you ask your team to contribute, they are listed as the authors of the pieces they write.

This allows them to begin to be seen as a true SME and provide exposure, credibility, and legitimacy to their work. They will also begin to grow their own personal network and gain followers on social media.

Step Two: Get Everyone Thinking about Content Idea Generation.

Review your company goals and strategies and lay out the content buckets that are needed.

Then get the team involved.

You can do this one of two ways: You can host small groups of 3-5 people to whiteboard some content ideas – be sure to include a cross-section of your company. Alternatively, you can make a place like a trello board to place ideas for those who like to process and will think of ideas as they go about their work days.

Step Three: Keep it as Easy as Possible for Your Team.

Make a non-negotiable commitment to make it as easy as possible for the people who are willing to be on “Team Content”.

Even when you have willing team members it will always be a time challenge for them to stay committed.

Here are some suggestions to help you honor that commitment:

Get your team’s opinions.

Use a group Q&A approach, it’s a fast and fun way to generate content. Pick a topic and send it to several people on your team asking for a short answer that they can get back to you within the next 24 hours, and then compile the answers you receive into a short blog post.

Brainstorm for them.

Eliminate the need for them to think about what to write about and do that for them. Identify what content supports your marketing goals and strategies and create topics for your team members and then you determine what the best way is to get that piece created.

Record vs. write.

Let the SMEs record themselves answering the questions you come up with. Some people are better at answering the questions verbally than they are putting them on paper. So go with that!

Remember we are trying to make it easy for them. So, rather than demanding they write a blog, let them record themselves answering and then transcribe what they say into a blog or other mediums like a typography video.

Or if they are comfortable talking on camera – have them record it and then you can edit into a video for YouTube, Instagram, maybe even TikTok. And always transcribe some or all of your video so you can use it in a blog.

Consider Interviews.

Rather than having the SME record solo, you could interview them on camera and use as a podcast or post on YouTube, and use the transcription for a blog.

Interview them and then write.

You can simply interview the SME and then you write a blog or piece of gated content for your site.

Super short videos.

Also remember, these requests don’t always have to be lengthy – you could pose a single question to your SMEs and ask them to record a short video with their answer.

So, what about you – are you in?

The compelling stats to support why we all should be investing more time and more budget in content marketing is only growing. And when you see a stat like the one below from Demand Metric, it is not a matter of if you will get on board, but when.

Bottom line: Content marketing generates over 3x as many leads as outbound marketing and costs 62% less.

Want to learn more –  schedule a meeting with us to learn how content marketing can become part of your 2022 Marketing Strategy.