What AR should blog about – common questions

A frequent comment that SageCircle gets when discussing AR blogs with AR managers is “But I don’t have anything to write about.” Horsefeathers! Not surprising, we think there is a nearly infinite number of interesting, useful topics to discuss. Some topics just fall in your lap, making it really easy to whip up a quick post.

Harkening back to what Mike Braude, one of my many research mentors early in my Gartner analyst career, use to say “If you get the same question twice, write a research note” – in this case, if you get a similar question from different analysts, write a blog post. These are great subjects because obviously there is a lack of knowledge or confusion about the topic, thus they rank high on the usefulness scale. The answers should also be easy to get down on paper because you and your team mates will have answered these questions a number of times so you probably have honed your response. It should be almost a simple transcription of what you already say, thus these topics rank high on the quick/easy scale.

Questions can come up in almost every interaction, inbound or outbound. They are especially easy to spot if you are doing a series of back-to-back analyst briefings. Once you get in the habit of listening for common questions you will discover that it becomes almost effortless to spot them.

SageCircle Technique:

• Capture questions from analysts in your Analyst Relationship Management (ARM) application or other tool
• During your regular team calls, have a recurring agenda item to identify and prioritize common analyst questions to use for blog posts
• Use critique of draft question/answer posts as the reason for client inquiries with your Tier 1 analysts – these critiques will not only improve the posts but reinforce your message in the mind of the reviewing analyst

Bottom Line: Answering common analyst questions is a low hanging fruit for AR teams looking for blog post subjects.

Question: Analysts – What topics would you like AR teams to cover in a blog?