1. Focus Your Initial Content on the Bottom-of-the-Funnel Buyer Questions and Get It in the Hands of the Sales Team

Remember, quick wins are essential to great content marketing, and one of the mistakes many teams make is starting off with questions that won’t generate immediate results, at least not from a SEO or sales standpoint. This is why addressing the subjects of the Big 5: cost, problems, comparisons, reviews, and best-of are generally the most critical to tackle early on in the content marketing process. Once completed, you’ll take these same pieces of content, stack them together in an organized way, and create e-books, guides, video series, and so on so as to enhance the sales team’s capabilities to educate the prospect, earn trust, and close more deals.

2. Shine a Light On the Superhero Participants by Giving Them Awards and Team Recognition

Publicly tell the stories of why team members are being recognized so that others will learn from their example and, one hopes, want to copy them. Remember, if you can make the employees (especially those in the sales department) look like rock stars, others will naturally want to be a part of the “movement” as well.

3. Encourage the Team to Share Cross-Department Successes in Meetings

Create a segment for others to tell their success stories. It is really powerful when these experiences start popping up in other departments. An example of this would be a salesperson thanking an engineer for the blog article that was the catalyst for a lead contacting the company and ultimately turning into a customer.

4. Share Results and Celebrate Milestones

You can customize awards and recognition for your situation, but here are a few examples of milestones worth celebrating:

• Articles or videos that reach a thousand views
• Number of leads generated
• Views from organic traffic
• When you finally rank on page 1 of search results for target keyword phrases
• Share recent deals and tie them back to the content that played into the customer experience

Note: A great way to do this in a consistent, organized manner is to create a quarterly newsletter that everyone on the team can read and see all of the highlights from that time period.

5. Create Some Team Goals to Strive Toward Together

Here are examples of activities you could consider:

• Individual: Five blog articles = slippers (something visible that they get to wear around the office like a status symbol)
• Collective: Two hundred blogs = whirly ball (everyone gets to go play)
• Department versus department competition (service team versus product team)
• Individual versus individual face-off

6. Make They Ask, You Answer Training Part of the Hiring and Onboarding Process for New Team Members in Every Department

This goes without saying, but it’s critical. Also, if you have an initial all-hands-on-deck workshop to kick off your inbound and content marketing efforts, make sure you video record it for future employees.

7. Make It Easy for the Team to Share Content

Want your employees to share content? Make it easy for them. Teach them how to do it. For example, you could introduce them to:

• Lazy links: A hyperlink to a website typed in by an instant messenger chat member while chatting because he or she is too lazy to open up a browser, type in the URL, and click “enter.”
• E-mail signatures: One of the simplest ways to point someone’s attention to content, especially with all new signature tools available on the market today.
• Social media: Many more employees would share company content if they understood how to share it, when to share it, and why to share it. A little training can go a long way in this process.

8. Ask for Help in Very Specific Ways

Remember, everyone wants to feel important, which is why “special tasks” or “missions” can be a great content marketing initiative. Here are a few examples:

• “Hey, here’s a strategic phrase that we don’t rank for yet and is an area you know a lot about. Could you address this topic so that people will find us when searching for this answer?”
• “Hey, Manager, we’re not seeing any content from your department lately. Could you bring this up in your next team meeting to drum up some activity and participation? Your department is full of knowledge, and we need to get that knowledge out to the rest of the world.”
• “Hey, we’re going to take all of your greatest blog articles and start filming video versions as well. We want people to not just hear you, but see you as well. Here is a meeting invite for your first filming session.”

9. Humanize It

Always remind everyone of the real human beings that this content affects. How does it change lives? What is the deeper “why” to what they’re being asked to do?

10. Stay Curious

Great content marketing leaders are always looking for an edge. Part of this is never being satisfied with average and doing whatever it takes to become a world-class organization of teachers and listeners. A big part of this is knowing how to ask the right questions of your team. Here are a few examples:

• “Hey, you’re really awesome at generating content on a regular basis. What is your secret to making it look easy? How have you worked it in to your everyday life?”
• “Hey, thought you’d be interested to learn that 80 percent of your team members are contributing content. I’m curious to hear how I can make it easier for you to participate so that people can learn from you too.”
• “How can I make this easier for the team to participate? How can I make it more fun?”
• “How can I prove this is working?

The bottom line to great content and They Ask, You Answer is this, folks: It’s about results. This is exactly why you must get results, then tell the results, then celebrate the results, and, of course, improve results. And, while doing this, tell the stories that help everyone remember that this is about real people.

Sometimes you have to lead by example. Sometimes you have to get in the trenches and work side by side. You have to empower others to equip and encourage one another. You have to set up a lot of feedback loops. You have to love the challenge of it. You have to build it into your culture.

No, it’s not easy, but it is certainly worth it.