Lead Your Competition with Content Marketing

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We have covered the value of creating content marketing to allow prospects to find your website (and find you!) for quite a while now.  One way to lead your competition and establish yourself as an industry expert is by creating engaging content in a variety of media.  You not only bring valuable attention to your brand, but also gain recognition as you rise above the competition.

Content marketing is not really all that new.  Neither is the concept of being a market or industry leader.  Leading your competition may not be your goal, but driving new business should be.  Content marketing IS the way today to build credibility and drive new business creation.

Actually, content marketing gets its humble beginning by way of the earliest of human beings; telling stories around a campfire to get a point across.  Storytelling is the way people relate information to themselves, remember important things and develop deeper relationships with those telling the tales.  Content marketing is the same, except for the age of storytelling, and the delivery.

Companies across the globe are taking content marketing seriously, and the concept is gaining worldwide traction. Don’t take my word for it, take a look at reports featured on the Internet from CMI, the Content Marketing Institute. Their recent report on Business to Business (B2B) marketers states that more than 90 percent of them are invested and utilizing content marketing to drive their brands and draw prospective clientele.  Also, when it comes to content, more than 86 percent of Business to Customer (B2C) share the same enthusiasm for the practice of providing engaging content to drive leads and their brands. 

If that doesn’t convince you check out MarketingProfs, another industry leading organization, wherein their recent reporting reflects similar data.  Additionally, these reports indicate that more than fifty-four percent of each type of marketing focus expects to increase spending next year.  

Leading your competition will take some doing, but if you never start, you will never know if and how it works.  Here are three tips to seriously consider.

      Lead the Field – CEO’s must become the champions for change.  If your company is not currently utilizing content marketing as the primary marketing strategy, yet you have a website, you are missing the boat.  Change is difficult under any banner, from redirecting a team project or changing the way your business operates.  Big or small, change is tough, but in this world, change is the only constant in business. Simply put it is grow or die.

      Candidly speaking, professional service firms such as lawyers, accountants and CPA’s, the medical profession and others are not known for their poetic prose or compelling storytelling.  In fact, these professions are filled with industry jargon, or even the use of Latin to avoid the average person from understanding them. Doctors and lawyers have very specific language that sets themselves apart from the rest of the world, and that is just fine for conducting business.  If you are using the same terms in your marketing, it is no wonder why most do not have much success with lead generation from the public.  If people cannot understand what it is you are saying, how can they develop a relationship with you?

      Content marketing is only picking up speed, and the technologies to provide multi-media content is growing by the day.  If your competition is not on the cutting edge along with you, why not get out ahead of them.  After all, articulating what makes your firm different and stands out from the crowd is how we succeed.

      Tell Great Stories - Put a team of content experts together from your internal staff.  If you don’t know marketing, you had better learn.  Marketing is everyone’s job, from the front desk attendant to the CEO.  Your customer service area is a great place to start, due to its natural interaction with your customer base.

What are some of the comments and stories they hear that can be used as a basis for a victory over a problem they faced that only your business made successful?

How did someone on the staff go out of their way to make the customer happy?  An interesting bit of history about the early days of FedEx reflects just a tale, as made legendary by Tom Peters:  FedEx and the Helicopter

It seems a blizzard in the California Sierras took the telephone lines down, leaving the local FedEx office without phone service -- or any way of connecting with customers.

So a junior FedEx staffer decided to rent a helicopter to fix the problem. Without asking permission from his managers, he put the helicopter on his personal American Express card and instructed the pilot to fly to the top of the mountain where the failed equipment was located. There, the employee jumped onto the snow-covered mountaintop, trudged three-quarters of a mile in chest-deep snow and fixed the line to get FedEx back in business. An excerpt from: HOW YOU CAN UNLEASH THE POWER OF STORYTELLING by Ann Wylie

FedEx was perhaps one of the earliest corporations to utilize storytelling as a way to grow their brand and gain new customers.  They have become famous, and infamous for their ability to take customer or company actions that affected customers and turn it into compelling, engaging content.  Every business across the globe has these type of stories to share, they must unearth them and begin to use them for the sake of marketing.

Evaluate, Analyze, Rinse and Repeat – In order to know what affect your content is making on your business, it is critical to develop a set of metrics and evaluate routinely.  By analyzing your content inventory by type (video, white papers, multi-media, articles, blog posts, etc) or topic (customer success story, improvements to make people’s lives better etc), you will understand what aspects of the individual pieces have on your business marketing.  Does your audience prefer articles to multi-media?  Do particular topics resonate better than do others?

Doing so will not only keep you abreast of your marketing efforts, it can lead to re-developing existing content into a different or expanded version in another medium.  Perhaps you have a series of articles from six months ago that can easily be updated and converted into a white paper or eBook.

If all of this sounds overwhelming and too much to consider, you may be right.  What you have to do is evaluate the above and then evaluate your goals and your competition.  Is this going to get you where you want to be financially, and will this separate you from your competitors, only you can answer those questions.

The team at Zen Marketing has the expertise, the talent and the tools to conduct a marketing assessment, develop an affordable plan and set you on your way to leading the field.  Or, if you do not have the time to invest, we serve as the outsourced marketing department for a number of clients.  Feel free to contact us at your earliest convenience and insure 2013 will be your best year ever.

The Power of Content

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It really doesn’t matter in which industry you serve, everyone markets to their prospective consumer. Some call them clients, some call them customers, some even call them members; they are all experiencing the effects of your marketing. That friends, is the power of content. Tailored correctly, content that is “persona-fied,” that is, crafted directly at the type of consumer for which you are aiming.

Marketers have a huge responsibility. Whether you market to the B2B, B2C, B2Gm B2NP or individual entrepreneurs, you have to not only generate interest, but also do it in such a way that they are actually paying attention. That is the power of content.

For those with very tight budgets, content marketing is very affordable. Cost-effective methods for content creation are abundant, and are viewable on a number of platforms. From blogs to video email, article marketing to webinars, today’s devices make it easy to access your clientele, because they are almost always connected. The smartphone, tablet, e-Reader and desktop can easily access your targeted content.

The holdback is the amount of effort involved with supplying a consistent amount and variety of targeted, persona-geared content. It takes a fair amount of strategic planning, specific branding, content creation and promotion. After that, then there is the issue of distribution. The investment in content marketing is both time and financial resources to set your business apart with the power of content.

Recently we spoke of search engine optimization being an extremely important facet of inbound marketing. Making sure that your web site can be found, and easily located by the use of keywords, back links and so forth is part and parcel of SEO.

SEO Aided by Powerful Content – When individuals search the net for a particular string of words, say a product or service description, the search engine returns an assortment of content that is found to match your inquiry. Therefore, by crafting your content piece with the proper keywords, your chances of making it to the front page of the search results improves. The better created content (effective copywriting using keyword strategies) rises to the top like well-made bread dough in the proofing oven.

Diversified content formats also aid in “getting found” easily, as the search engines respect the quality of the content provider that is genuinely attempting to provide “worth-while, engaging content” and not just fluff or word-farm generated spin documents.

The more content visible on the internet, the better your chances of making to the top of the keyword search. That takes time, as you will need approximately 50 pieces of SEO’ed content to make a real impact, according to The Hubspot report – State of Inbound Marketing (disclosure: we are a Hubspot shop and a value added reseller). Depending on your capabilities, you may have to supplement your in-house content creators with outside copywriters. Each business is unique to itself, so

Content Marketing is Low Cost Advertising – While content marketing is not a panacea, it definitely helps support your advertising budget. Content can replace a great part of it over time, as the library of pertinent, engaging content grows in volume. Rather than pay-per-click, or pay-per-impression ads generate leads, the quality of leads will be better the more the content is viewed by returning site visitors. In that fashion, content can not only aid in reducing your advertising costs, but drive better quality leads through the sales process, allowing for your sales team to bring them to close more quickly.

Remember, once the content is on the internet, it is permanent. Over time, the content may become stale and no longer viewed by current visitors, but no one said that the previously created content couldn’t be re-purposed, rejuvenated and re-published. Turning a series of articles that are perhaps a year old can easily be re-purposed and re-published into an eBook or Special Report(s). Voila! New Content. The cost of generating a new ad or even new content is extremely less through this strategy.

Lead Generation is the Result of Content Marketing – As mentioned earlier, higher quality leads come from those visitors that find value in your content, as opposed to PPC and other paid online ads. With a well-rounded and comprehensive content strategy, leads of varied interest can be further targeted. A visitor that is viewing your site for the first time is not the same as a visitor that has returned with regularity. That is an indicator of being somewhere in the sales funnel, heading toward “buyer ready” status.

The reasons this particular prospect is returning are presently unknown to you other than they find value in your content. Sales should not intervene until said prospect has been judged to be in the final stages of the buyer ready. This is known as lead scoring. An internal system of knowing where the prospects are in the buying cycle. These leads that continually make their way through the process are naturally higher in quality than someone responding to an advertisement, and therefore stand a better chance of being closed.

In closing, what also needs to be considered is identifying the powerful content from what doesn’t perform. Through internal analysis, you can determine that your prospective, target audience may respond to webinars better than online video, or your digital magazine more so than your email campaigns. Defining metrics and routing analysis can help you create better, more power packed content.

Would you like to find out more about the Power of Content? After all, you are seeing how it works firsthand...

Is Emailing Newsletters Still Relevant Today?

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For the past several years newsletters have been an important way to deliver content for our clients but we may be past the tipping point of their efficacy. This is because we receive too many of them to read them all. And in our emerging “stream economy” this tactic may be unaligned with the way people today are absorbing content.

A Little History Lesson

When email marketing was still evolving and on the ascend we encouraged clients to engage their target audience with newsletters. It was a great way to build relationships because you could demonstrate new products or services, share what your company or your people were doing in the community, and provide events listings. The addition of really nice photography made it visually appealing, too.

We could put so much information in a newsletter: articles, editorial, images, video, surveys, polls, events. Newsletters seemed to be the ideal way to foster interest. We could even promote new subscribers through automated sharing! And all those links in and out really impacted search engine optimization at that time.

A well designed newsletter looked professional and provided enhanced credibility for many businesses.

All good things must come to an end

Gary Vaynerchuk recently spoke at Inbound 2012, the preeminent conference on inbound marketing held in Boston. Gary made many interesting points but his comments about marketers ruining every good idea really struck a chord. Marketers take every great new concept and suck the life out of them through overuse or in some cases misuse. This may very well be the case with newsletters.

Watch Gary’s talk about his concept of the stream economy and how he believes, as a culture, people absorb content today. Our team members at Zen Marketing are finding every day that Gary’s points about "micro content going to rule the day" is spot-on, and marketing tactics going forward need to realize this and take advantage of it.

A Shift in Delivering Content

Our clients are seeing a great response to taking the very same content they previously used in their newsletters and positioning it into blog posts as separate articles on their website.

Blogging is a great way to communicate with an audience. The reader can choose what he/she wishes to read and not waste time wading through the unrelated or unappreciated material. Best of all to the publishing business, when content is written and structured properly people searching for information on the web can find your articles through organic search, thus expanding your marketing reach.

The blog articles may not always be keyword driven enough to satisfy the savvy filters on modern inbound marketing platforms (we recommend the Hubspot® platform, use it ourselves, and are a Hubspot® certified partner) but the key here is to make it relevant to the intended audience.

If you are new to blogging, you might enjoy reading our article on blogging and why this important marketing/SEO process must be respected in today’s internet-driven environment.

Email still plays an important role on the outbound marketing side, side by side with social media. These provide measurable distribution processes and are used to announce the new content, which brings interested readers to your website. Your reader gets some (hopefully) compelling information, your site traffic gets a boost, and your overall message is enhanced. Plus use of this approach allows your top of mind awareness to be further enhanced and developed.

Zen Marketing is a Constant Contact® partner and we use this powerful platform for our clients every day. We have just refocused our use of this important delivery system to better align with the behavior of our client's target audience.

Even print can play a role- mailing a relevant article is a great way to follow up a face-to-face meeting with a prospect or client.

Shifting your investment of time and talent from newsletter creation into blogging will provide a better reading experience, fits well into the emerging stream economy, and requires much less work than pumping out entire newsletters.

The right marketing partner can show you how to further leverage your blog content and expand your marketing reach. You’ll get better engagement with your known audience plus create opportunities to become known with people seeking information, products, or services.

Inbound Marketing and History Lessons Can Work Together

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A favorite saying in business is “those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it". In today’s economy, this lesson can often be disputed. It is easy for a business owner to develop a rear window perspective and allow their business development to be determined by tactics based in the past- it's human nature to want to stay within our comfort zones and rely on past successes because new or misunderstood opportunities are intimidating or represent risk. There is nowhere this behavior is more prevalent than in the adoption of technology. It is viewed as costly, difficult to master, ever changing, and often confusing while at the same time it is possibly advancing the business of our competition,

But even though technology is advancing at a faster rate than ever before, there are still many proven best practices and techniques everyone should be advantaging if they want to be successful. When applied through technology, the business owner can gain access to a greater number or prospective customers and create measurable reports of their business at a more efficient rate. Service professionals from architects to accountants have shown success when that taking advantage of these tactics, plus the many new marketing techniques, but not in a way that makes you lose the personal touch with the people who keep your business standing.

Making Marketing with Technology Personal

Most marketing tools today revolve around using technology to reach their customers. We are a technology-based marketing company and our people are always on the go- does this sound familiar? Our client companies are now using web pages, mobile media, and social networking to keep their message fresh and engaging in this fast-paced world. But these are just the tools that will help you reach more customers. In order to be successful, your company must combine this technology with quality marketing techniques along with good content creation. You want to reach more people, but only the kind of people that will be interested in your business, product, or service.

Making marketing (and especially advertising) feel personal is one of a series of immutable laws in marketing. You want your customers to feel like you know them and are listening to their needs, not sending them spam and constantly pitching them to make a purchase. Businesses can leverage message boards, online polls, and dozens of other technologically-based marketing techniques in tandem with direct mail to get firsthand information about what their customers are thinking. This allows for the design of effective promotions and adjustments to business offerings that maximize sales... and profits. With so much information available right at your fingertips, why should a business ever be out of touch with its users?

Improving Support for Small Businesses

People used to avoid small businesses because they felt they could get lower prices and comparable service at the large national chains. This is no longer the case. Online marketing tools do just as much to improve the sales of small businesses as they do the large corporations. Best of all, you do not have to be an expert on marketing or technology to succeed in the online world. There are companies (like Zen Marketing) that can set up a great marketing campaign for your company and provide the support necessary to keep your web pages running.

The best part about online marketing for the small or private business is that it is highly efficient. Instead of worrying about a middleman managing your affairs, marketing companies put you right in contact with your viewers and prospects. You can discover where they are coming from, what they are specifically looking at, and what parts of your web page are driving the sales process. This allows you to streamline all of your efforts in to one solid inbound marketing process that keeps customers coming back for more instead of wasting time and effort putting together campaigns that never get you anywhere.

Combining Quality Marketing with Technology

Technological advances do not change how you advertise, just where you advertise. If you want to create a quality inbound marketing process, you need to focus on creating quality information about your business, product or service. Create and share links to pages that tell people why your offering would benefit them. Fill your web pages with information on why your expertise and service is the best choice for them. The use of keywords in content is important to search engine optimization (SEO) but remember a lot of keywords without the proper context will impede your inbound marketing results- people will not want to stay on your page or follow through with your offer.

It is incredibly important to embrace new technology if you want to sustain the growth in your business, but you need to combine these tools with solid marketing techniques as well. In the past, the focus of an advertising campaign was to explain why your product or service was a good choice. This approach is still effective with internet marketing. You do not want to get so caught up in using the marketing techniques that you forget to embrace the basics of good marketing strategy. Use a marketing provider that will blend these two business practices, and you will find your company growing at an unprecedented rate.

How to Explain Inbound Marketing to Professional Services Firms

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If you were to have the ability to deliver your very best, top ranked Keynote Presentation to each of your investors, strategic partners, your favorite customers and every competitor’s customer base, would you like to? What if you offered your best marketing information to grow your top and bottom line revenue targets, would you be willing to make the effort?  Of course you would.  That is exactly what an inbound marketing (content marketing) program allows you to do twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. 

Inbound marketing is nothing more than utilizing your best information about your business, your best customers and your strategic partner’s creativity and inspiration to draw potential consumers in your direction.  By feeding that group with consistent engaging and relation based information, they will make the transition to becoming a client.

In the old days, the customer would sit patiently and quietly listen patiently to the sales pitch.  Today's consumer knows that they manage the sales transaction now. Today's consumer is market wise, and knows it as well as your best sales person, and your competitors.  Inbound marketing provides an opportunity for you to create compelling, educational, engaging content that creates a relationship with that individual over time. By nurturing the potential client with worthwhile, inspiring information and compelling benefits, when it is time for the buying transaction to happen, the consumer you have created a relationship will choose you over your competitor.

Inbound (Content) Marketing is not a new concept.  What is new happens to be the way potential clients become actual ones.  They are certainly more informed and possess a better practical understanding than they ever have been, and their expectations are much higher than one might imagine. There is a huge amount of competition, and every one of your competitors is after their share.

Don’t just take my word for it, take a look at what Google and Jim Lecinski have to say:

“Google’s Zero Moment of Truth -  ZMOT is that moment when you grab your laptop, mobile phone or some other wired device and start learning about a product or service (or potential boyfriend) you’re thinking about trying or buying. I’m sure you know what I mean — you probably do web searches like this every day.

BUT

Would it surprise you to know that a full 70% of Americans now say they look at product reviews before making a purchase?

Or that 79% of consumers now say they use a smart¬phone to help with shopping?

Or that 83% of moms say they do online research after seeing TV commercials for products that interest them?

Try to see Inbound, or Content Marketing as:

• Content is storytelling, and there are many stories both within your firm and from your best clients.  Share the stories that make people’s lives better.
• Content is the pre-requisite to Brand Awareness.  It will build it if it is good.
• Content is easily communicated in multiple mediums, such as blogs, social media, video, reposts, Likes and Re-Tweets.
• Content is an investment in your brand, your future and that of your customer’s lives.
• Content separates you from your competition.  The one with the best content wins.

The marketing “game” is constantly evolving, and changes in marketing strategy must be capable of shifting along with the marketplace.  Technology being what it is, you can expect change at nearly every turn.  What is not changing, is the level of competition, and the knowledge of the consumer.  The responsibility of every professional services firm is to be nimble, quick to react, market focused and consumer friendly.  After all, it is about developing leads that can be converted to clients, and the way it is done today is through engaging, inspiring value propositions.  Your efforts to provide value and sincerity consistently will improve your market position.

Inbound marketing is about moving away from price related sales people, and toward “trusted advisor” or “alliance consultant” status.  If you were providing worthwhile information that makes his or her lives better, why would anyone move away from you?

There is no reason to fear inbound marketing, as it is the natural evolution of the marketing and advertising concept.  Traditional forms can supplement it, enhance it, but the conversion to online search is reaching critical mass.   Don’t be left wondering what happened.

Understanding Inbound Marketing - How the Proper Marketing………...

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…………can help accountants, CPA’s, financial services firms and financial consultants “get found!”  Those accounting firms that have already embraced inbound marketing are experiencing significant growth in lead generation, lead capture, internet marketing “buzz” and have differentiated themselves from their competitors in new client development. 

Let’s face it, the traditional model of marketing and advertising is broken.  Prospective customers are sick of being “sold” and have switched to commercial free radio, use caller id, get their news online, DVR television programming to speed through commercials and have shunned traditional sales techniques.  Now they search for products or services online.  Those firms that embrace internet marketing are winning, leaving their out-dated competition in the dust.  Through the use of inbound marketing (sometimes referred to as content marketing) new client development has become a win-win strategy for customer and company alike.  Rather than being sold, consumers are seeking out companies that demonstrate they can make their lives better.

The use of internet marketing, or inbound marketing as it is better known, can help you in a number of ways, specifically:

¨      Gain an increased brand awareness

¨      Get found by those in need of your services or products

¨      Create competitive differentiation between you and  your competitors

¨      Capture leads and convert prospects to customers

¨      Gain measurable results and identify real return on investment

¨      Raise the rankings of your website in the search engines

How can this all happen by switching to inbound marketing?  Well, it cannot be summed up in a sentence or two. It takes a dialogue with your web master (outside agent or internal department) about additional advantages and action steps necessary to achieve higher results. 

CPA firms, accountants, financial firms and most consultant websites lack an interactive site.  Other than social media follow buttons, a quick scan of sites reflects a lack of blogs, calls to action for free information, surveys, offers or any other form of interaction by prospects with the business.  Today’s marketing concept is relationship oriented, and unless there is a dialogue with potentials, they just might remain nothing more than suspects.  Interactivity is key to converting visitors to a site to a lead. 

Even further effort remains to convert a lead to a customer, but that is why we all have web sites after all, isn’t it?  New client development is the crux of any business, and inbound marketing for accounting firms, financial services and consulting firms in the financial services field are in much need of a comprehensive internet marketing strategy.

If you are still unsure of what inbound marketing is and what it can do for your firm, consider these bullet items. An inbound marketing firm can assist you with:

¨      Setting up a blog and perform blog posting

¨      Aligning social media sites and your web site and blog interactively

¨      Build back links to bolster your website's awareness with major search engines

¨      Create Call to Action Campaigns

¨      Design Email Campaigns for lead nurturing

¨      Provide keyword building for web site and on-page optimization

¨      Produce pay per click campaigns

¨      Increase the number of leads generated

Inbound marketing grows new client development, and more leads means more clients. More clients mean greater ROI, and bringing top line revenues in affordably is key to success in the digital world we live in.  Inbound leads are more than 60% less expensive to generate than traditional advertising.

There are dozens of other tactical and analytical advantages to becoming involved with an inbound marketing agency.  The only decision that is pending is not if, but when, you will decide to get involved.

Internet or Inbound Marketing & The 5 Critical Stages

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Marketers today prefer the term marketing sales funnel, as the top of the pipeline is wider than the bottom, where many prospects (suspects?) enter, but through qualification, choice and follow through determine how many actually proceed from suspect to customer.  Some marketers also believe there is an undisputed path by which prospects make their way through the funnel, but it is my belief that there is more than one road leading from the top of the funnel to the customer bucket beneath.

A search on the internet will expose the term START.  High energy information sales hawks subscribe to this formula, which is an acronym for Strategy, Target market, Aesthetics, Results and Traffic.  At Zen Marketing we think they have it backwards, and in fact wrong.

The 5 critical stages of creating an internet marketing sales process in my belief mirrors the customer buying cycle. 

1)      Traffic - Generating enough leads takes awareness that your product or service exists, so traffic generation will be the key to success. A consumer buying cycle begins with being aware of a need and a realization that your product or service web site has the ability to service that need.

2)      Relationship – The entire process of driving traffic to your site for the purposes of growing a marketing sales process is to develop a relationship to prospective customers. This may be called lead nurturing, and there are processes for it. The buying process calls this consideration.  It is a customer evaluation of how your offers differ from others, and how they relate to their needs.

3)      Call to Action – Providing incentive, information, credibility and reasons to act on our offers. Preference or Intent is how the customer and their inclinations are considered, whether emotional or logical, brings them closer to a buying decision. This is the foundation of good inbound marketing.

4)      Transaction – The act of purchasing or passing on one’s offer.  The goal is for the lead to become a customer, and the sales cycle is more individualized than some marketers appreciate, but this is individualized marketing. Reflective of the buying cycle, the sales cycle mirrors it.  It is the act of purchasing from your site.

5)      Repurchase or Referral – The customer for life mentality in place and acted upon in an ongoing nurturing and marketing/sales effort.  Customer loyalty is key. For buyers, the process that causes them to stick with you for the long term, repeat purchasing and referring others.

Working through the critical marketing and sales processes is different than the former methodology of pushing persuasive ads and inducements to sale, and is better received than the old model.  A good internet marketer understands the process and embraces it just like the consumers of the 21st century.  Businesses looking to the future would be wise to embrace it as well.

Why Isn't Your Business Blogging?

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It's time to create-great content and drive new customers to your business

If there is one thing that I learned from my involvement with HubSpot, it's that everyone should be creating content in one way or another. Blogging is best when it is a team effort. This encourages a fun, creative, and expressive energy an fosters real team collaboration. Not only should everyone create content, but they should support the blog content by tweeting, commenting, liking, and pinning each other’s work.

The best content is human and transparent. Blog about your mistakes and your successes. Blog about how you have learned from a poor experience with a customer and how you've since improved on your customer service. Show your readers that you promote a culture of accountability and constant improvement.

Write about your client projects and use your blog as a space to write about your business’ happenings. This not only shows that your business is active, but it also allows search engines to rank you for searches of your clients’ names. If you’re thorough with you content’s quality and SEO, your company could benefit greatly from this organic style of public relations. Blog about all your clients, both large and small. They will appreciate the exposure and should be open to sharing the posts with their networks.

I have always felt that writing and reading improves communication. So as your team does more writing and reading, they will learn about each other’s writing styles. Everyone will naturally pick up new language techniques and communication angles. This can inspire your team and produce better communication internally and with your clients. Better communication yields stronger relationships and more business.

But blogging doesn't have to be expressly outward in nature. Blogging for internal communication is an  excellent outlet for your team to creatively brag about their accomplishments, to make announcements, or to get things off their chests. Office memos are so "1986" and emails often get lost in the madness of the work day. Blogging is more "sticky".

But keep your content in the proper perspective. 80% of your content should be focused on educating your readers about your industry and your values. 20% should creatively talk about your products and services. The goal is to become a resource for your readers. Support them with useful information and they’ll support you with business.

And always network with your content.  Having good content can only take you so far. If no one knows about your content, it’s not doing anything for you. You must combine content creation with distribution of your content via social network marketing, email marketing, lead nurturing/inbound marketing, and word-of-mouth.