Sandra Stewart | October 9, 2014
Sometimes even the best-laid plans and detailed strategies won’t save your blog from the ravages of time pressure, idea droughts and reluctant writers. Ongoing success requires maximizing your intellectual capital in every way possible. Here are a few proven tactics:
Reduce, reuse, recycle. This mantra applies as much to content as it does to sensible resource use. Aim to use all the content your business creates multiple times, including at least once on your blog. A few ideas: excerpt articles that executives write or are quoted in, post case studies and recast sections of presentations.
Give writers a leg up. Even the most enthusiastic writers need support, particularly when their job description does not include writing. Even with help, some people will never write a post—but you can still get their expertise into the blog. Just have your marketing team interview them and ghostwrite posts or publish the interviews as Q&As.
Jump on ideas. A fresh idea is like just-picked produce—the longer you wait to use it, the less appealing it gets. Encourage bloggers to act on their ideas as soon as possible so they don’t lose inspiration. And help them find ideas, such as recapping highlights of conferences they attend or mining internal conversations.
Don’t overthink. Not every post has to be a polished pearl of wisdom or a major news item. That’s a beautiful ideal, but “reasonably smart, useful and engaging” is a more realistic (and tough enough) standard to meet.
For more strategies that will keep your blog on track, see our Strategy>Shift guide, 5 Steps to a High-Powered Blog.
