Question
Julia and I have been sharing your blog article with all our employees as we strive to win over our brick-and-mortar employees to the value of participating in our blogs. But many of our brick-and-mortar employees don't see the synergistic connection between brick-and-mortar and online. Consequently, they view blogging as make work - not really their responsibility to help our online business. Can you suggest any other articles or research that could help us win over our brick-and-mortar employees? Many thanks!
Here's what Julia and I shared with all of our employees recently:
Thank you for sharing this important and insightful article from the owner of Modern Retail with all our employees. I hope everyone takes the time to read it. What is very clear, as the internet increasingly becomes integral to our lives, those retailers who have original and appealing content will win. Those who do not - will lose. This is not just critical for online retailers - this is critical for all brick-and-mortars as the internet's consumer-share-of-mind continues to grow.
Answer
First of all, I loved what you wrote to your staff and appreciate you and Julia caring enough to share it with everyone (this actually might be the subject of my next blog article). Anyhow, thank you!
Yes, getting people to understand the importance of content marketing has been a struggle. Trust me, I get it. It's hard stuff and we struggle with it even at Modern Retail! However, the thing that bothers me the most is this statement: "employees don't see the synergistic connection between brick-and-mortar and online."
This is a huge disadvantage to you right now. To be an effective retailer, you must be multi-channel. I really don't think there's anyone debating that anymore. On the contrary, if you're not tightly coupling your channels together, you could find yourself in a world of hurt one of these days. Yes, your demographic is a little older, but they are still online in droves.
For example, do your employees make sure they get your customer's e-mail address when they are in-store? I always tell my clients if they do not get the e-mail address of a customer, especially one that's made a purchase, go ahead and take $5 out of your purse or wallet and throw it away!
Attached is a whitepaper from a company called HubSpot that might help. HubSpot provides a product/service to help people with in-bound marketing (aka content marketing). This whitepaper goes into how you create a "content culture" at your company. You can find a ton of other very useful articles and case studies on their website:
I also wrote a blog article last year about how you can get your employees and customers to blog for you, which you can read here:
Please let me know if you need anything else, I'm happy to help. Thanks.
Enjoy,
Todd Myers
Modern Retail
Creating a Content Machine by HubSpot: