Many companies invest in their content strategy, but what could be the advantage of blogging by employees? What is the purpose and how can your company benefit from it?

Blogging is all about creating, publishing and promoting content. It generates content for your website, which is the center piece of your online content strategy, and fuels other digital channels your company is using.

We could explain numerous advantages of blogging, but let’s highlight first how effective blogging plays into each of the 3 steps in the buyer’s journey (awareness, consideration and decision stage) and secondly how your brand and human capital can benefit from it.

Awareness: Attract visitors to your website

Research shows that creating blogs generates 55% more visits on a website.¹ When the right keywords are used, blog posts fuel Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and drive traffic to your company’s website. Search engines are continuously looking for valuable content, so creating the right content will definitely help your website to be shown higher in the search results. You can also leverage the created content by sharing the blog posts via your social media channels in order to gain extra traffic to your website. On top of that, research has shown that writing blog posts generates 97% more links to your website.²

Consideration: Build trust and relationships

Writing blog posts helps building trust in your company. While giving you a competitive advantage, blogging enables you to stand out as a reliable source of information in your industry by providing people with information they are looking for. According to Inbound marketing specialist HubSpot³, blog posts are rated as the 5^th most trusted source for precise information.² Hence, making use of your company’s expertise in the most efficient way would imply sharing this expertise through blog posts of good quality and reaching the right people with the right content. While discussing with prospects and customers, succeeding in building trust will help you to build and maintain relationships and leading your prospects further into the buyer’s journey.

Decision: Convert prospects into hot leads

In the third stage of the buyer’s journey, you aim to convert prospects into hot leads. Hence, each blog post is an opportunity to generate new leads. By focusing on nurturing your prospects, you are not only building a strong relationship with them. It enables you to lead them to your specific Calls to Action (CTAs). These can generate traffic to your landing page or e-commerce platform. Research shows that B2B marketers creating blog posts receive 67% more leads than those who do not write any.² Moreover, according to a HubSpot survey, 60% of businesses who blog, acquire more customers.⁴

Empower your employees

Blogging also has a high potential value for human capital. By allowing your employees to create content based on their expertise, you empower them to develop the company’s website all together and to express their opinions. Dilys Robinson and Sue Hayday’s report ‘Employee Engagement’ suggests that employees are motivated by intrinsic factors like personal growth, working for a common purpose and being part of a larger process, rather than simply focusing on extrinsic factors such as pay and benefits.⁵ Consequently, empowering your employees to co-create content, helps in turning them into motivated brand ambassadors. Here lies another great opportunity of blogging, as 2016 Edelman Trust Barometer shows that 52% of us see employees as credible spokespersons.⁶

Enable employees to build their personal brand

Employees gain a lot of expertise and they usually become specialists on some industries. Creating blog posts gives them the opportunity to share their expertise online, through the company’s website and social media, enabling them to build their personal brand. Several studies indicate that this results in an increase in productivity, engagement and retention.

So, try to implement blogging and adopt it into your company to become a thought leader in your industry. Creating valuable content will help you to attract more visitors to your company’s website, to build trust and relationships with your prospects and convert them into leads. In addition, by empowering employees to collaborate and by enabling them to build their personal brand, blogging can be a valuable asset for your brand and human capital.

References:

¹ 10 unbelievable statstics sell boss business blogging
² Business blogging in 2015
³ Inbound marketing course 2016
⁴ 19 Reasons why your business should be writing a blog
⁵ Three steps for transforming employees into brand ambassadors
⁶ 2016 Edelman Trust Barometer