4 Reasons Why Your Boss is Ruining Your Blog

One of the biggest hurdles to overcome for an ambitious inbound marketer can be getting total buy-in, and blogging is a big part of that. Blogging is an absolutely invaluable part of successful inbound marketing. Once you’ve fully realized and accepted that quality helpful content is a necessity for promoting your online brand, the next step is to get to it. Get those topics flowing and roast ‘em and post ‘em.

But if you aren’t at the top of the company food chain, you likely already know that it isn’t that easy. You know what comes next. The excruciating red tape procedures to get that puppy online. Page 406, paragraph 47.8 of the company compliance manual reads that everything must yadda yadda… It can be like pulling teeth.

Addendum 47.8.1 says go suck a lemon.

Frankly put, bureaucracy can quickly kill the inbound process. That’s why total buy-in is so important from everyone. We’ve seen it happen so many times, the boss’s laundry list of unmanageable checkpoints:

Reason #1: It’s Taking Too Much of your Time

Sure, blogging takes time and that time is a company resource. But if the boss doesn’t see the value in what you’re doing then that’s a pretty clear sign that you don’t have buy-in from the higher-ups and as such, your entire inbound strategy is doomed to fail. They need to be educated and we’ve got a great article available on how to sell your boss on blogging. Here’s a couple of quick stats you can hit them with right away:

• 92% of companies who blog multiple times per day have acquired a customer from their blog. Even 66% of those who only blog once per week have acquired a customer. Frequency matters.
• 52% of marketers say that blogging delivers the lowest cost-per-lead of any inbound marketing channel.

Reason #2: Death by Committee

Whatever goes onto the blog needs to be reviewed for sure, but if your boss feels the needs to play editor for every last keystroke, then you’re never going to be able to produce content at a consistent rate. Why? Because your boss is busy, and I can guarantee that your blog content is nowhere near his radar.

Team up with a qualified colleague to provide a second set of eyes. There’s no need to involve the sales team, the production team, the marketing team and the board of directors for review. They should be left to do what they do, not bottlenecking the inbound process because everyone feels the need to have their say. The majority of their input should come during the strategy brainstorming phase. For the white collars, they should be providing the inbound team with a guideline of things that can and can’t be published in the blog before you begin, not pointing out things after. Get as much approval as you can up front.

There needs to be trust by company management put into the inbound marketing team to manage the inbound strategy. By teaming up with a colleague you can help motivate each other and improve productivity and quality that will help make your blog successful – before it gets hog-tied into submission with red tape.

Creative freedom my a...

Reason #3: It’s Not Enough

One of the dirty little downsides of Death by Committee is that everyone in the food chain is going to want their two cents in there. That means you’ll end up a chore list of edits to make because the article “doesn’t have this”, or “should have that”. It won’t be long until the post itself is longer than the book of Psalms.

That’s when we can take advantage of what’s called internal linking. The optimal blog post length is about 600 words, so once you find yourself getting into the multiple-thousand word range, then it might be time to begin thinking about chopping up your topic into multiple posts and linking certain keywords throughout your post to other topics that you’ve already written about. This also helps strengthen your image as an expert within your blog. SEO wise, breaking lengthy topics up into multiple articles helps you optimize for long-tailed keywords. Let’s also not forget that it will give your brain a rest when scrambling to come up with new topics.

Reason #4: It’s Not Consistent with the Brand

Inconsistency is yet another byproduct of too many chiefs at the helm. If everyone is having their say and micromanaging every little nook of the blog, then you are destined for all kinds of surprises whether it be grammatical, tone, etc.

More is not always merrier.

Most if not all of these issues can typically be solved by issuing a content style guide as part of the initial inbound strategy. A style guide lays out the rules beforehand that everyone can consult with, rather than making up a new set of rules every time on the fly.

Now that you’ve seen the warning signs of how bureaucracy can take hold of your inbound marketing plan and choke in into submission like Jake the Snake Roberts, you can begin taking advantage of some of the solutions we’ve outlined here to help make your blog a success. If you’re just starting out, we’ve got some great introductory info available to help get your blog off the ground: