How to get your colleagues to blog for you

Do you struggle to come up with super content that you can churn out for the latest company blog post each day/week/month? We blog for clients every day so, for us, its an ingrained habit. What if it isn't like that for you? Clients left, right and center tell us that they want to blog but find it really really really tough to keep coming up with ideas and don't have time to focus it as regularly as is needed.

Wait, though. Are they likely to hand over awesome blog posts just like that?

We suspect not so we've done some homework and come up with ideas that just might help you persuade them that it is worth their time and effort to help you:

1. Start with the facts - blogging works. Blogging hugely increases a website's popularity with search engines, tells potential customers that their are real people actively working in the business and increases the likelihood of a customer choosing to buy. Be specific to your business/department and show exactly what blogging contributes. 'It delivers X so we need it.'

2. Talk your colleagues through how a potential customer behaves, making sure to show how vital the blog is. Try 'Potential customer type W does X then Y then Z then buys.'

3. Highlight your ideal situation from the customer's perspective - interested in A, looking for B, found information C, case study D and blog post E, buys.

4. Explain why them. This point is crucial. Show them what it is that they know that potential customers want to read about. A bit of flattery at this point is probably necessary :) Examples are:
Sales people on how they help customers
Research and development on what’s coming up in new products
The CEO on the latest developments within the company or, even better, in the industry 
Customer service reps to answer common customer questions
Experts on the latest developments within their areas in the business and in the industry

5. Give them a detailed brief to help guide their writing and help them feel confident to start. Include a topic or a question to answer, length and deadline. 

6. Support your writers. Give them specific tips, such as how to write a great headline and offer to edit their posts.

Additional tools:
- Show them what your competitors are doing well and badly (be specific, show blog posts).

- Make it mandatory. Careful with this one! Get managers on board to help enforce.

- Make it competitive. Careful with this one too. Show stats for blog post shares, hits etc. Add in a prize.

- Give them stats. Even if you don't make it competitive, make the stats highly visable.

- Get as many contributors as possible. It takes the pressure off you and your experts.

Let us know how you get on!