Check out STANLEY Security’s blog here.

By the end of my third week at STANLEY Security, I had received approval to move forward with planning and launching the new corporate blog.

Less than a month later, I had developed the blog strategy, outlined our design needs, coordinated with our web vendor and approved a prototype for what would become a new channel for us to communicate with customers and prospects.

Simultaneously, I conducted an audit of our content marketing materials, adding each asset to a spreadsheet and marking whether they were obsolete, current, needed to be updated or could be repurposed for the blog.

I identified more than 50 pieces of content that could be repurposed for the blog, so I met with others on the marketing team to talk through these pieces and understand who could help me revise them. During this meeting, we also prioritized the pieces that would have the most impact on the blog. I boiled this list down to the top 10 priority pieces, based on SEO research and organizational priorities.

Over the course of a month, I worked closely with subject matter experts to repurpose these pieces for the blog’s launch. It was challenging at times to motivate leaders within the organization to prioritize these blog posts over their other work. However, I found that by lending my support, being flexible and offering assistance when needed, I was able to build relationships with them that influenced their willingness to help. These relationships have been critical to my professional growth at STANLEY and have helped me accomplish other goals during my tenure.

Finally, it was time to launch the blog – with much anticipation, I refreshed my web browser in the afternoon on September 9, 2019, and to my horror, I found more errors on the blog than I ever expected. I worked day and night for the next two weeks conducting QA tests on all devices, working to find solutions to the errors and communicating with our web vendor to implement these solutions.

It was a less-than-ideal launch, but the experience was invaluable. There is truly so much to learn in times of failure – like the importance of maintaining a good relationship with vendors, remaining flexible when timelines and plans change and, of course, how to get back up after failure has knocked me down.

All my hard work and attention to detail have paid off exponentially. Within six months of the blog launch, we published 25 blog posts that generated 21,000+ organic pageviews and 2,800+ referrals. The blog has generated several marketing-qualified leads (each one valued at about $23,000). We’ve also seen our blog posts spark conversations among customers – one of which was about a solution that could drive $30,000 in business.

Not only this, but the blog is changing the culture of sales at STANLEY and helping us to develop better relationships with consumers. On Thursday, Dec. 5, Vice President of U.S. Field Sales Kyle Gordon shared with the organization: “Huge #thankyouthursday to Emily Malott. Our awesome new blog has literally changed my morning routine. It’s a great reminder of our purpose and a great way for us to connect with a broader audience.”