The single biggest question most companies have about creating a blog is this one: who has time to create content for the blog? Consistency is important – you need to keep providing fresh (and relevant) content on your blog.
One strategy for populating the blog is to make blogging a byproduct of your other content development efforts.
The “+blog” approach
Think of it as ‘supersizing’ your content development – order a blog on the side with nearly everything you do.
“You want a blog with that?”
- Developing a webinar? Create a blog post about it – both before the event (promoting the webinar) and afterwards.
- Just shoot a great video? Embed it in your blog, with a few comments about interesting points.
- Published a customer story? Find a point to highlight in the blog.
You get the idea.
Warning: Don’t just shill the content
Focus on delivering real value in the blog post – not just pushing the content asset. Or, in the immortal words of Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman in the book Content Rules, “Share or solve, don’t shill.”
Blog about an interesting fact, lesson learned or best practice from the asset and offer the link at the end as an additional source of content. Make sure that the reader gains something from reading the blog in the first place, even if they go no further.
Consider your timing
You want to create the blog content at the same time you create the initial content asset (the story, video, whatever). This makes it part of the larger task rather than a separate to-do for someone on your blogging team.
But that doesn’t mean that you have to publish the post at that time. It may be more valuable if you wait. You can use it to fill a gap in your editorial calendar or schedule during your vacation. For a time-based event like a webinar, use the blog to drive traffic to the recording well after the initial airing, when you have a fresh set of visitors to your blog who didn’t see the initial promotion.
And remember the SEO benefits
Using the +blog approach can also help you get more results from the original content by driving more traffic from the blog. Because they are updated frequently, blogs often rank highly in organic search – the other content can be ‘found’ through the blog.
Anne Janzer 
Great advice! I’m sending this on to a client who wants to start a blog but doesn’t know the first thing about sourcing content. This will get the wheels turning. Thanks.
Glad it’s helpful. It’s an approach that many of my clients are now adopting.