SAS has a large corporate blogging program with over 28 blogs managed by their marketing team. They developed a content strategy to align their blogging with corporate goals like establishing SAS employees as trusted advisors. Their strategy includes monthly and quarterly content planning, finding the right people to blog on specialized topics, and coaching bloggers. Their blogging program has led to marketing successes like speaking opportunities and sales engagements generated from blog posts. SAS measures results through analytics on traffic and social media monitoring.

1. Results-oriented blogging
Alison Bolen (@alisonbolen)
SAS

2. Presentation overview
• SAS Background
• Growing a corporate blogging
program with a content strategy in
mind
• Content planning for multiple blogs
• Balancing content strategies across
a large number of blogs
• Coaching bloggers about content
strategy
• Measurement and results

3. Background: SAS social history
• 1976: First SAS Global
Forum
• 1996: SAS-L launches
• 2004: Internal blog
program started
• 2006: SAS
communities launch
• 2007: First external
blog launched
• 2011: Transitioned to
WordPress platform

4. Background: Marketing Editorial Team
• Part of the larger External Communications
team, which includes PR
• 8 full-time “brand journalists” edit & manage:
 Blog network with 28 blogs
 Two quarterly magazines
 3 Knowledge Exchange microsites
 ~ 200 customer success stories (annually)
 2 monthly e-newsletters
 12 quarterly e-newsletters
 Social media program management

5. Strategy: Map goals to corporate goals
• Become primary
source for SAS
news & info
• Establish SAS
employees as
trusted advisors
• Facilitate an
ongoing dialogue
with customers
Translated: PR, Marketing & customer support

6. Strategy: Understand content ecosystem
Property Primary goals
* SAS awareness
Non-SAS * Engage prospects
domains * Establish credibility
* Increase awareness
Identify the problem/opportunity & credibility of SAS
(Priority SAS topics) thru thought
Knowledge leadership
Exchanges * Limited lead gen
and blogs
Social Media
* Surface relevant solutions to CBOs
Research solutions * Exploration, “stickiness”
* Lead nurturing
www.sas.com
Evaluate
vendor offerings
* Lead capture
Negotiate
and purchase
support.sas.com
www.sascommunity.org Implement
* Customer support resources
Customer support blogs and assess
* Provide content to support cross/up sell

7. Strategy: Align with broader content strategy
For content to be relevant and valuable, it must be:
• Persona-based: developers vs. business end
users
• Aligned with the steps in the buying process:
remember your funnel
• Business problem-focused: align with marketing
business objectives
Metadata is the enabler:
 Target audience
 Topic
 Industry
 Offering
 Stage of the buying cycle

8. Strategy: Find the right content
• Where do stories live?
 Word documents
 Power points
 Videos
 Live events
 In the minds of employees
• Where does knowledge
live?
 Sharepoint
 White papers
 Wikis
 Internal blogs
 In the minds of employees

9. Strategy: Find the right people
Gary Cokins, Closing Chris Hemedinger,
the Intelligence Gap The SAS Dummy

10. Planning: Monthly assignment
• All posts
due on 15th
of month
• Publish
most timely
posts first
• Publish
breaking
news items
and fillers
throughout

11. Planning: Quarterly focus on one topic
• Quarter 1: risk in
insurance
• Quarter 2:
customer
intelligence for
insurance
• Quarter 3: combat
fraud in insurance
• Quarter 4: business
intelligence for
insurance

12. Planning: Three themes every week
 Mondays: Getting started articles. “Topics that I
know that I know.” Exploit this knowledge to publish
a quick post that requires minimal effort.
 Wednesdays: Topics that I am trying to learn, such
as sampling and simulation and efficient SAS
programming. Share what you learn motivates you
to get it right.
 Fridays: Posts about data analysis. Often inspired
by reading other blogs or by having a robust
curiosity.

13. Planning: Divide by areas of specialization
 16 Think Tank
team members
for healthcare
 Authors
specialize in
specific areas
 Assignment to
blog on your
topic area at
least once
every other
month.

14. Balancing: Display commitment
• SAS Voices
blog acts as a
testing ground
for new
bloggers
• Internal blog
network of 700+
bloggers also
act as testing
ground

15. Balancing: Group blogs REQUIRE editors
 No assignments and
nobody in charge =
NO CONTENT
 Rethink your idea of
editor. Does not have
to have
“communicator” in job
title
 Job responsibilities:
content
chaser, people
wrangler, idea
generator, post
polisher, etc

16. Balancing: Plan across blogs as needed
 World Statistics Day:
12 posts
 SAS 9.3 Launch:
10+ posts
 Conference editorial
calendars: plan ahead
to avoid overlap
 Consider event
assignments by theme
 Blog home page
shows posts from
all bloggers

17. Balancing: Combine or retire as needed
 Combine when unable to
blog often: Executive
blogs
 Combine when topics too
similar: Social media and
Customer intelligence
 Retire when not being
updated consistently
 Retire or transition when
employee leaves role

18. Coaching: Workshops & training
• Monthly blogger meetings to teach
SEO, WordPress tips, writer workshops, etc
• Quarterly blogger engagement training
• Social value workshops to introduce benefits of
blogging and other social content strategies to
new users
• Storytelling workshops being developed
• Resources on intranet include blog FAQ
site, blog discussion group, video tutorials, a
blog about blogging, social media guidelines

19. Coaching: Advise; don’t micromanage
• Be patient with different learning styles
• Don’t pre-judge
• Don’t expect too much: Not all 200 bloggers will
follow every piece of advice
• Don’t take it personally when others ask, “Why
don’t the bloggers do _____?”
 Photo guidelines
 SEO
 Individual tips about titles, paragraph lengths, etc

20. Results: Customer support
• “Sorry for the
confusion, and thanks for
the details, I could not
have done it without you.”
• “Great post. I might have
to steal this line of
thinking next time I walk
into such a project.”
• “Before you ever code a
function or statistical
procedure, look and see if
SAS already has a pre-
written one. It is almost
certain they do.”

21. Results: Marketing success examples
• Bloggers invited to
speak at customer
and industry
conferences.
• Blog posts picked up
by industry
journalists and
magazines.
• Blog posts lead to a
sales engagements.

22. Results: The new PR
Social media monitoring finds an MIT Tech
Review article that mentions the use of SAS
for social media analytics.
I arrange for
an interview
& blog post
IT World Canada – and others –
interview same customer after
reading SAS blog post.

23. Results: Top news source on sas.com

24. Results: Next steps for measurement
• Use of SAS Social Media Analytics to
better understand sentiment and influence
to increase by end of 2011.
• New CMS system will be integrated with
WordPress blog system in 2012
• SAS Customer Experience Analytics will
analyze traffic run on CMS and WP sites
by 2013

25. Questions?
Alison Bolen
• @alisonbolen
• blogs.sas.com
• alison.bolen@sas.com
• 919-531-9057

26. Copyright © 2009, SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved.