Content is about us. Look inside any company, at any electronic project and in every advertising campaign – content has a role.
It’s the basis of how brands articulate their customer promise. It offers flavour and shape to consumer and brand conversations.
While operationally, it commands large investments in engineering, influences decisions across an ecosystem of channels and decides discussions about internal assets and resources
And so many businesses are still not equipped to handle and manage content effectively. The Content Marketing Institute’s 2016 yearly report revealed that although 99 percent of entrepreneurs are dedicated to their content programs, only a third say their businesses are effective in their own use of content.
That is symptomatic of a variety of challenges that organisations are currently facing around content.
Finding ROI can be hard
As channels proliferate, content multiplies and yields diminish. The pressure to nourish the content machine leads to sales-driven articles which is not currently helping customers find what they desire and results in less revenue.
Organisations have often invested substantial amounts but have not consistently followed with usable and executional change to supply the business value of the investment.
Additional to this, since the quantity of content and output of channels grows, publishing, the commissioning and delivery of content spans several silos, with no preparation or delivery mechanisms.
Therefore, organisations are increasingly struggling to manage content efficiently, while simultaneously recognising the importance of devoting energy, time and resource.
Not bad news
Encouragingly, organisations have started to wake up that content is. What is key here is having an content strategy that is company-wide.
To put it differently, content strategy is the version that underpins all content layout — technical, visual and functional. It goes beyond content and is about aligning people, processes and technologies with client requirements and business goals.
The more business leaders understand the worth of content plan, the more prepared they’ll be to invest in it
By creating a content strategy, businesses will have a blueprint for the thoughtful organized and creative use of content, giving long-term control over itself endeavors, while consistently providing its viewers with pertinent information.
But businesses have yet to view content as a strategic asset. The short term will be worked from by A purely strategic approach to content, but it fails to deal with the challenges companies face like inconsistency, inefficiency and ineffectiveness.
If material is a valuable business resource effort and time ought to be spent managing it well. Here are five steps to developing a successful content strategy.
1. Start with your story
It is not enough for people to understand your brand name. Consumers look when forming an attachment to your brand for significance.
Content conveys meaning through principles and responsibilities. But, storytelling is not designed to be a marketing tool. The purpose of content that is customer-centric is that it builds between the brand and the consumer and extends beyond products.
2. Know your audience
In order to genuinely create content that customers care about it’s vital you know them well. There is a plethora of information that may build the picture.
Insights must go beyond demographic and age and delve deeper into attitudes and behaviours to allow a 360° image of personality tastes to be formed.
3. Plan your content
With so many stations there is recognition that customer experience is determined by providing relevant, interesting and personalised content across all channels effortlessly.
The results of content preparation that is good is your comprehension of how the content organized is going to be prioritised, formatted and displayed.
4. Align people and process
As behaviours and attitudes are as important as any practices folks are the most important element in any material plan.
In the end, content is not a marketing dilemma — it illuminates when they act collaboratively and sections and like clockwork it may work in harmony
5. Engage your leaders
The more business leaders know the value of content plan, the more prepared they will be to spend in it. Involvement offers advocacy for content plan initiatives by encouraging the drive for business wide planning and providing governance.
Channels continue to evolve and customer expectations are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Organisations that devote resources, effort and the time to a content plan will be the ones to control advantage.
