Odds are, if you are reading this, then you’re ready to either start using content marketing for your company or kick it into high gear.
And you can’t do it alone.
Enlisting some of your employees to write content can help you expand your content to include each of your employees’ areas of expertise and more writers means more content as well.
But what happens when you have some inexperience in your employees when it comes to content marketing? You know, people who maybe haven’t written in awhile or don’t necessarily see them as creative types?
Well, like your grandpa who finally swapped their flip phone in for a smartphone, they can learn to love it.
Here are 5 ways to help incentivize your employees to write content.
Don’t Force Your Employees to Be Writers
This should be a given. If an employee doesn’t want to contribute to writing content, then they probably have a fairly good reason. You wouldn’t force someone in your HR department to start working alongside the accounting team, would you? So don’t take someone who has no interest in generating content. However, that doesn’t mean they can’t be involved in the process. They can still work alongside a writer to help contribute to the content with their expertise.
If you force people to write, it’ll only produce uninspired, bad content. So make sure you create a content team that is interested in contributing.
Talk About the Impact
Employees who are hesitant about contributing to your content strategy might feel this way because they simply don’t understand the benefits of good content marketing. Outlining the positive impact writing blogs, posting videos, and other forms of content creation can have on your business is a great way to help motivate your team.
Talk about how smart content writing can lead to an improvement in SEO through implementing keywords and generating engagement on your site. Content creation can help your company work towards being labeled as an industry leader and can better position the brand as a trustworthy, credible business. And of course, let them know how actionable content can drive conversions.
Give Them Guidance
A lot of times, when people are hesitant to write some content, it’s because they don’t think of themselves capable of doing it. And that’s fair, not everyone was born to write. Just like how not everyone was born to do math (Curse you, calculus).
So, your job is too help show them that they can.
Hold a few writing seminars where you go over what makes a good blog or article. Share some of your favorite articles within your industry and talk about what you like about them. Give your less experienced writers trial articles and give them feedback.
Be honest. Tactful honesty is one of the the only ways they’ll become better and more confident writers, which in turn will encourage them write more.
If you don’t already have a long list of article titles and topics to hand-off to your writing team, have a few brainstorming meetings to help bring out some creative ideas.
And if they still feel discouraged, inspire them by reading to them the most inspirational story of our time, ‘The Little Engine that Could’ (Okay, don’t actually do this one… unless you’re employees are toddlers).
Reward Your Writers for Kicking A**
When someone on your writing team writes a great article, reward them.
Whether it’s some extra money or a prize, some actual incentives can help your employees find that extra motivation to deliver solid content. Create a reward systems for your writers based on word counts, number of pageviews, search rankings, or the number of conversions. Whether it’s on a per week or month basis, creating a fun incentive program can help boost your writer’s content in terms of quality and quantity.
Another fun idea is to have people vote on their favorite piece of content created and have the writer be recognized. Or, put together a LinkedIn B2B competition to see who can achieve a conversion with their piece and a monetary reward for whoever wins. You can do similar friendly competitions with engagements, social shares, and SEO performance.
Also, your blog posts should contain the author of the piece, rather than just saying it was written by your company. That way, your writers will gain the recognition they deserve for their writing and will therefore be more encouraged to share their articles on social media. This will help your content get more views and engagement while positioning employees as subject matter experts.
Create Goals and Share Results
One of the best parts about content writing is diving into the data and seeing how your pieces performed. Not only is this a good way to see which topics and type of content is garnering the most engagement and conversions, but it’s also a great means of validating your writers’ work.
An effective way to do this is to set some goals for your content over a specific duration in time. Whether you want to drive more conversions or more traffic, just make sure your goal is measurable.
Using tools like Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, and SEMrush, you can track the performance of your articles and other content and relay the information to your writers. If the data is good, your writers will feel more confident in their abilities. If the numbers aren’t great, find the a solution and right the ship. Perhaps it’s a misuse of keywords or the length is an issue. Whatever the problem, address it and help your employees become better writers.
Content Matters
Content is an essential part of any business strategy. If you’ve been incorporating content into your business for quite some time now, pat yourself on the back.
Now make it better. Because that’s exactly what your competition is doing right now.
Dig into the data and find out what areas of your content marketing aren’t up to snuff and improve them. Treat your content like you would any other facet of your marketing department. It’s not going anywhere anytime soon and leading companies around the world are the ones who have fully immersed themselves into their content. They are starting to think more like a media company than a business when it comes to creating connections with their social media posts, blogs, and articles and infographics. They are driving conversions, engagements, and page views all while boosting their brand identity and perception. Now it’s your turn.
If you still haven’t put into action content marketing strategies, then start today.
