It’s been the refrain for years: content is king. The era of overt self-promotion is long over, and your single best bet to building trust is through regular high-quality content marketing. But make no mistake — creating high volumes of valuable targeted content is difficult and time-consuming.
So how do you lighten the load? You create a culture of content.
What is a culture of content?
When you create a culture of content, you’re doing two things:
- Getting everyone — not just your marketing team — thinking about content opportunities
- Building a structure where content ideas can be funnelled to the right people
At the end of the day, you’re getting thought leaders and experts throughout the company to each do just a little bit of lifting on content creation.
The limitations of internal marketing resources
Many small to mid-sized companies have one person on staff for content creation, often someone junior. Between layout, graphics, imagery and copy for social posts, blog posts, and newsletters, a lone coordinator’s workload can get overwhelming pretty quickly — and that’s not counting those who are also in charge of shooting and editing video.
Another issue is that your coordinator may lack specialized knowledge about aspects of your industry. Want to bring in someone more experienced? They’re often too busy for extra responsibilities.
This is why it’s so helpful to get people from all corners of your operation, especially those with specialized knowledge, thinking about content. Even with plentiful and experienced marketing staff, the diversity of input and knowledge will take your content game to the next level.
But how is it done?
Collecting content ideas and topics
Creating a shared ideas document like a Google Spreadsheet is a great first step. Employees can contribute topics and resources for your marketing team to use on the regular or when they’re running low on material.
Names should be attached in some form so marketers can follow up with questions or even an interview with the employee to flesh out the topic and get necessary info.
Putting aside time
Next is making sure employees are using your document. You don’t need a whole whack of time — getting folks to set aside as little as 20 minutes a week to submit a few topics can be enough, and the regularity will help keep them mindful the other days of the week.
Ambitious folk can even use their time to take a shot at writing short-form content — or longer pieces like blog posts if they have the time — themselves. Your marketing team can then vet, polish, and take them to the finish line.
Setting realistic goals
Finally, make sure you’re setting realistic goals so expectations are clear. Do you want five topics per department per week, or do you want two blog posts a month?
Expectations could well be different for each department and will likely change depending on the season, as most businesses have their busy and not-so-busy periods. It all depends on you, your business, your people, and what you want to accomplish.
Content marketing isn’t going anywhere
All indications are that content will rule marketing for the indefinite future. Anyone who wants to seriously compete needs to take part in some measure, so fostering a culture of content is key. In this environment and always, your employees are your best resources — everyone has something to contribute.
Do this right, and you’ll be recognized as a thought leader and expert in your sector, giving folks one more reason to choose you over competitors.
Having trouble defining a strategy for your content marketing? Get direction with a content plan from 6P Marketing — we can even help you get started creating. Contact us for a free consultation.