Sandy Adam, the Global Manager of Social Media Marketing at ANSYS, Inc returns for her second episode. In case you missed her first appearance on the podcast, let me give you a little background on ANSYS. They’re a global leader in engineering simulation software with about 3,000 employees, many of whom have advanced degrees. Their software is used in the creation of rockets, cars, and even smartphones. Sandy is back to update us on how their content – specifically their blog – is moving the needle at ANSYS.
About the ANSYS Blog
ANSYS’s blog is their primary digital marketing asset. It receives 50,000 views per month. Since 2011, they’ve been publishing blog posts five days a week. It started out with the marketing team writing blog posts and including their CTAs. Today all of their employees have the opportunity to write – and 243 people have contributed so far.
Many employees are excited to be a part of the blog because of their pride for ANSYS. Sandy and the editorial staff try to make it easy for employees to contribute by guiding them through the process. They assist with storytelling and getting the information into the proper format.
For those who are comfortable speaking but not writing, the team will record a conversation (webinar style) and transcribe it for the blog.
Niche Blog Content
In an effort to steer clear of being too sales oriented with their content, ANSYS works to make the blog more of a resource for customers and salespeople. Sandy conducted a poll among readers to find out what types of content they craved to read. She discovered that they wanted to see more technical topics. Fortunately, the ‘Tips and Tricks’ section of the blog helps to recruit more contributors who write this type of very technical content.
![How Niche Blogging Moves the Needle at ANSYS [Podcast] | Social Media Today](http://www.socialbusinessengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/High-fidelity-physics-simulation-of-an-automotive-radar.png)
When ANSYS launched their campaign ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems), Sandy collaborated with the product manager to create three different blog posts. One is a thought leadership piece, one promotes the webinars and white papers, and another is a deep technical dive on a specific topic related to the campaign and autonomous vehicles. She takes a similar approach to the larger trade shows ANSYS attends. When it comes to reporting Sandy includes the Ayzenberg Earned Media Values among the other data points you would expect to see.
![How Niche Blogging Moves the Needle at ANSYS [Podcast] | Social Media Today](http://www.socialbusinessengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/ayzenberg.png)
A screenshot of Ayzenberg’s EMV of Facebook activities.
The blog is their number one source of referral traffic, and the CTAs have a conversion rate of 15%. It’s self-hosted on WordPress and Sandy uses the integrated app CoSchedule to schedule social media posts to their branded channels.
To involve employees in sharing ANSYS’ content, Sandy uses GaggleAMP and LinkedIn Elevate. Sandy mentioned how the sales team loves having the ability to share blog content on social media.
When it comes to the future of content marketing at ANSYS, Sandy is exploring targeted advertising. She is experimenting with LinkedIn, doing account based marketing as well as targeting different countries on Facebook.