Managing your company blog: benefits and best practices
By Jamey Austin
Blogging on behalf of your company is more than just a word vomit of opinions and then smashing the “publish” button. There are many considerations to getting it right, such as:
- Company voice and tone
- Format, length, style
- Focus keywords and SEO
- Goals
- CTAs, subheads, pro tips, call-outs
… just to name a few.
So, how do you make sure every author knows your guidelines? And how do you create a process that ensures the trickier elements – SEO, headlines, tags – get the attention they need before pressing publish?
Here’s how you can use Confluence as your step-by-step content review and collaboration tool:
Create a blog author process
Here’s a Confluence page called “How to write a blog post for Atlassian,” which gives blog authors the information and guidance they need to know before they begin to write.
Make guideline pages easily available in your editorial team’s space so all of your authors can access it at any time.
The above example uses a simple page format coupled with the expand feature to help keep the page from getting too cluttered.
The expand feature allows you to hide some of your text in a link on the page. Then when you click "Expand", the extra text drops down.
Outline your blog process and create a template
Now it’s time for Step 2 – Drafting your blog. When your blog authors are ready to get their Hemingway on, they click the button “Create public blog post from template.”
A previously set up page template appears automatically.
On this page, authors can add a title (where it says “Blog title”) and start writing in the space provided (Start drafting your content…). As the author works, their changes are automatically saved in the draft.
Confluence lets you create page templates that can be used again and again. By standardizing with a page template, you’ll establish a level of consistency for all your blog posts. Learn more about Creating a template in Confluence.
Why use Confluence for company blogging?
Sure, you could create an outline in Word. You could even create an outline in email. (Don’t do that.) But using those tools for a reusable template? Forget about it.
Centralize information
Comments and feedback
Standardize processes
Confluence helps you centralize this information for easy access by anyone in the company. In the above example, anyone at your company can find the page “How to write a blog post.” All authors can read the guidance and start a new blog draft with the information they need.
Confluence also enables teammates to review posts and give feedback right on the page with comments. Blog posts are iterative; each goes through the process of drafting, reviewing, and editing. And I know you’ve experienced how painful this process can be: The scattered feedback (often in different places like email) and not knowing if someone has seen the post. Comments in Confluence are the height of content review and collaboration for a piece of writing.
And, using Confluence lets you standardize your blog posts for consistency and reduce needless repetitive effort. By creating a page template that everyone can use, an author doesn’t have to create a new page for every blog post. Plus, he or she knows all the requirements, because they’re listed right at the top of the page.
This process frees up time for the author to help with goal setting, or to think about headlines and focus keywords.
Confluence has two kinds of comments: inline and page comments. Each offers a way to comment on pages and blog posts to provide feedback and have conversations on the same page.