In case you’ve been living under a rock or just haven’t been paying attention, content creation impacts your brand’s future success.
And having a content team — not just a single person who writes for your blog — will be the driving force behind that success. You need to build a team that’s dedicated to producing, editing, and distributing content to develop brand authority and improve relationships with your target audience.
There are no ifs, ands, or buts when creating a stellar company blog. The proof of expertise is right in front of your customers’ eyes.
Content Builds Influence
As Jason Gracia puts it, “Authority is part earned, part claimed.”
Obtaining authority as a brand takes time, but that’s not to say you can’t start claiming it now.
Regularly creating exceptional content lets you showcase your expertise by proving your knowledge and sharing it with customers and other industry leaders. You become a resource that potential, current, and future clients keep coming back to because they respect your knowledge and opinion.
Another resource for this strategy: Can You Afford Your Own In-House Content Team?
Blogging Impacts Leads
Keeping up with a company blog is not only important for showing your customers that your brand is an expert, but it can also nurture quality leads in your sales funnel.
In a study from HubSpot, 57 percent of companies with blogs acquired a customer from a blog-generated lead. Furthermore, customer acquisition strongly correlated with how frequently they published. The below list shows the ratio of how often a company published content to the percent of customers it acquired from that content:
- Less than monthly: 33 percent
- Monthly: 49 percent
- Weekly: 72 percent
- Daily: 78 percent
- Multiple times a day: 89 percent
The consensus? More content leads to more customers.
Another resource for this strategy: 5 Simple Ways Your Sales and Marketing Teams Can Play Nice to Improve Results
Elements of an All-Star Content Team
To successfully build your content team, you need to be sure you hire for all necessary roles. Having five great writers without editing or inbound backgrounds will leave you with a content mess that will ultimately drive customers away.
Balance your content team’s talents and build it for success by hiring for these four roles:
1. The writer: Hiring individuals with excellent writing skills is the perfect starting point. Without good content, your customers won’t want to stick around. Don’t limit your interviews to only those who have written in your industry. Test potential hires for the ability to write with the voice of your brand.
2. The inbound marketer: This person views your content differently. An inbound marketer doesn’t just see an article; she sees an opportunity to showcase expertise and bring in quality leads. She also understands Google authorship and will make sure to add rel=“author” tags to your bylines so Google can connect your articles with their authors.
Implementing SEO tactics and appropriately driving customers to your website with calls to action from your content is vital to your content marketing success.
3. The editor: Without a great editor, your content will be clogged with inexcusable grammatical and structural errors, which will deter anyone from reading your future posts. Hire an editor to ensure your content has a consistent voice and is free of any mistakes.
4. The social media manager: This person will handle your distribution efforts. If executed properly, social media is a prime tool for sharing your content. A good social media manager will know not to bombard your followers with all of your content, but will instead build relationships over time. That way, when your company does share a piece of high-quality content, your audience is ready and willing to read and share it with others.
Another resource for this strategy: How to Use Content to Recruit Top Talent
Building a solid content team with the necessary framework lets your brand claim the authority it deserves. Show potential customers that you value their interest by providing them with well-structured, high-quality content about your industry. They will be so impressed with your efforts that they won’t think twice about using your services when they’re ready.
Post by Maya Szydlowski
