By Steve Baldwin & Chris Bell | December 26, 2013
In the past year or so, it’s become more evident that there is a strong and positive correlation between the speed at which your company publishes content and the speed at which important inbound business events — such as leads, product inquiries, site traffic, or other inbound events — occur.
For example, in a recent survey of more than 7,000 businesses conducted by Hubspot.com, it was found that companies publishing between 9 to 15 blog posts per month received twice as many new inbound leads as companies that only published between 3 and 5 posts per month. Companies that were able to publish more than 15 articles a month did even better, receiving more than 5 times as many new leads as the 9-to-15 baseline.
Hubspot’s survey doesn’t purport to show an actual causal relationship between the number of blog posts and instances of business success, but because the correlation is so strong, it suggests that there may be opportunities for your business to fill your lead pipeline by ramping up your publishing schedule.
If you decide to do this, our advice is to do the following:
1. Value Leads Appropriately. Creating good, timely, thoughtful content is expensive. Unless you assign an appropriate dollar value to an online lead, you may be selling your content team’s inbound lead generation efforts short. Assign behaviors on your site’s analytics package (Google Analytics or other system) that can serve as proxies for interest and engagement that may ultimately result in a qualified lead. Such behaviors include lots of time browsing articles, repeat visits, visits to your “about” and “executives” area, and of course visits to your contact page.
2. Streamline Your Approval Process. We’ve all seen fatal brand-burning gaffes being committed on Twitter, Facebook, and other social channels, and in virtually every one of these fiascos there was no formal approval process in place to prevent the errant message. But just because your blog posts are editable and deletable, they’re also quotable and “screenshottable” and plenty of damage can occur to your brand unless you have an approval process to ensure QA and serve as a “last exit” for edgy statements. So yes, an approval process is essential, but it shouldn’t be so bureaucratic that it slows down your ability to publish. Does everyone on your executive team need to see every post before it goes out? Does everyone get to have “veto” power over it?
Some friction is good in the blog approval process, but too much friction will slow you down and burn you out, so draw an appropriate balance between security and nimbleness.
3. Leverage Internal Expertise. What generally makes content generation expensive is the fact that genuine Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) are valuable enough in the market to charge plenty for their advice. SMEs can charge a lot because they know their stuff and can write well about it. But your own organization may be loaded with people who know as much as high-priced SMEs, and just need a helping editorial hand to transform their wisdom into words. Find your internal SMEs, and leverage their expertise. Loop in their managers into the approval process as the copy develops (obviously, you don’t to be sharing internal “trade secrets” on your blog).
4. Outsource (Carefully). If you’re not in a position to fund effective content generation efforts in-house, you may need to look outside for help. If you’re going to outsource content generation, remember that the web is rife with sites promising high-level content for pennies. It may be an overgeneralization to say that all content from these content farms is terrible, but talent follows money, and any writers worth their salt won’t be listing services there. Before you cast your fate to the Web, ask yourself whether your firm may already have a roster of freelancers who’ve pitched in on editorial projects in past years. One or more of these people may be a perfect match for your high-velocity content needs.
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