The burden of blog writing often falls solely on the marketing team’s plate. Which, can make sense at first glance. Marketing is the team that typically owns the content strategy for a brand.
But what about the sales team? Should salespeople blog?
In this article, we’ll explore why sales should be blogging and how to get them started.
Five Reasons Salespeople Should Blog
Despite their aversion to it, I firmly believe that sales professionals should be writing blog articles for their company website and/or on their own personal blog.
Blogging presents an opportunity for sales reps to develop themselves as trusted experts in their industry, raising their visibility and authority through online channels.
Here are five reasons why salespeople should be blogging:
- Customer Insights – Sales reps are uniquely positioned within the organization because they have continual exposure to your existing and prospective customers. This gives them insights into the questions, concerns, and comments that customers are regularly making. This insight can lead to great content.
- Refining Message – The act of blogging forces the author to distill their knowledge in an easy-to-consume way. Said differently, it forces you to refine your message. This is a critical skill that sales professionals must develop to ensure their sales campaigns resonate with their target prospects.
- Establishing Expertise – By regularly publishing thoughtful articles, your sales team can establish themselves as experts in your industry. This status will help them build authority online and generate more leads.
- Follow-up Content – Blog articles make great follow-up content after sales meetings with prospects. By publishing blog posts on common questions or concerns, sales reps can follow up with helpful information written by them.
- Contribution to Marketing Strategy/SEO – There is also the added benefit that blog articles that the sales team creates will assist the marketing team’s content and SEO strategy. I’m sure they’d appreciate the help!
How To Get Started
So the next question is inevitably, “How do I make the sales team blog?”
The quick and dirty answer is that you don’t make them do it. Instead, focus on ways you can help get them started and foster their skills as blog writers.
To get them started, start with these three tips:
- Show the Value – Highlight blog content’s value in your revenue generation process. Show your sales reps how much your blog articles are being read on your website and how many impressions they can get when shared on social media.
- Use a Content Matrix – Brainstorm content ideas by using a content matrix. This is a great tool to bring into sales meetings to get your sales reps talking about questions/concerns/insights for buyers. You can then turn these into blog post ideas.
- Make it Easy – Many people, including sales reps, are intimidated to write entire blog posts. Make it easy by allowing them to start by creating simple outlines that your marketing team (or other writers in your organization) can fully develop and pen in their name. The sales rep doesn’t have to do all the writing to contribute to the blog.
I’ve found working with clients over the years that you’ll often have a minority of reps that “get it” and will actively contribute to your blog (either writing themselves or providing ideas). These also tend to be your top-performing reps.
Developing a culture of sales and marketing alignment will aid in this process, and your teams will work together to understand your buyer, the buyer’s journey, and the value of delivering insightful content to your prospect.
