Imagine you’ve graduated with your Marketing Management diplomaand landed a job as a regional sales representative for a mid-sizedoutdoor clothing manufacturer. You’ve been working for thecompany for a couple of months, and you’ve noticed that, while thecompany is active on Twitter and Facebook and uses email marketing,it doesn’t have a corporate blog. Recently, the topic ofblogging came up in a conversation with some of yourcolleagues.

Kati: I was reading a few articles oncorporate blogging over the weekend, and I’m wondering if we shouldstart a corporate blog.

Jeff: What would be theadvantages? You know how much time we already spend marketingonline.

Kati: Yeah, but I think we couldbe more efficient if we added a blog to our website. Readingover a recent marketing report from HubSpot, I learned a bunch ofstats about business blogging. [Kati pulls out herphone and starts listing stats from the report.] “55percent more site visits.” “97 percent more links to theirwebsites.” All just from having an active companyblog.

You: Okay, but how often would we haveto update the blog to get these results?

Kati: From what I can tell, the moreactive the blog is the better. According to the report,companies that blogged once a month and companies that blogged oncea day both generated leads, but more frequent posts generated morecustomers.

Jeff: That makes sense, but whowould write all these posts?

You: Actually, I was a studentblogger at BCIT, and had a bit of a following. I’ve wanted toget involved with more online marketing, so I could get the blogstarted. When I was a student, I read thisgreat Globe and Mail article called “How toWrite a Business Blog Post in Under an Hour” so I can churn outthose posts pretty quickly.

Kati: That’s great. One ofthe reasons we hired you was for those excellent writing skills ofyours. Since you have some experience blogging, perhaps youshould pitch the idea to Lynn [your boss]?

You: Sure. Do you think Ishould send an email or meet with her in person at thisstage?

Jeff: I’d go with email. Since Lynn can be pretty resistant to anything that involvesincreasing workload, maybe you could pitch the blog idea via emailand suggest a follow-up meeting. You and Kati could presenther with some more data at the meeting.

Kati: Good idea, but Lynn’s beenreally busy these days, so you’ll have to persuade her to take timeout of her schedule come to meet with us.

You wrap up your conversation with Kati and Jeff, and ask Katito send you the links to the articles she read over theweekend. You review the articles and think that your bosswill be persuaded by the HubSpot stats since HubSpot is awell-known industry leader in content marketing.

You review the articles and are surprised to learn that “46% ofpeople read blogs more than once a day.” You do a bit moreresearch and discover than a few of your competitors have blogs ontheir websites and post an average of once a week. All you’llneed to do to outperform your competitors is post twice aweek. You think you should have time forthat.

Since you started this job, you’ve noticed that your boss, LynnWight, isn’t very tech-savvy, so she might have some questionsabout what business blogging is. You realize that you’ll needto make sure she knows that a business blog is more than justshort-form content posted to a part of your website. Thiscontent must be relevant to your business and useful for yourclients/customers to get the benefits of having a blog. Blogsusually have a more informal and/or conversational style. While blogs are mostly text based, they sometimes also includephotos and videos.

You already know this information about blogs, but you need tofind a way to describe what a blog is to your boss without soundingcondescending. Good thing you have all of thoseaudience-centred communication skills from your COMM courses atBCIT.

Task: Write the required message to Lynnfollowing the indirect persuasive message checklist criteria. If necessary, invent any reasonable details that are consistentwith the case described above.