We all know that creating and posting original content is important. Content forms the backbone of your inbound marketing strategy, and it helps you generate leads and close more business. But the minute you start to plan a content strategy, you might have noticed that your to-do list starts getting longer.
The idea of having lots of content — from blog posts to podcasts and webinars to ebooks — is exciting. But the reality of creating lots of content — from choosing topics to writing copy and blog creation to editing — can be overwhelming.
Is there any way to make the process easier? Absolutely. Here are four steps you can take to kickstart your inbound marketing content factory without being overwhelmed by content.
Collaborate
Whether your first impulse is to create all of the content yourself, or to assign it all to one employee, fight the urge! Call a meeting and let all of your employees know that you have decided to make content creation a priority. Inform your team that the company will be tackling the issue of content creation in a new way. Let them know that everyone is responsible for content creation, no matter what their job title is.
And when you get a lot of long looks at this announcement….
Support Contribution
Collaborative content creation does not mean that everyone needs to churn out a blog post or a white paper every day, every week, or every month. It means that content creation is open to everyone, not just the folks in marketing.
Once you open the floodgates of content creation to your team, encourage them to do so by supporting the process and providing positive incentives. For example, you might reward someone whose post received the most shares on social media with an opportunity to select lunch for the whole team. In addition to competing against each other individually, you could have competitions based on any of your metrics (SEO, social media shares, lead generation, etc.) between departments or against past — “We got 20 new leads last month!” — and present — “Let’s see if we can get 25 new leads this month!” — performance.
Make it Uniform
But with so many different people contributing to your blog, each with their own writing style, contributing to the content, won’t everything look disorganized? You can get around this by making everything uniform…
To give all of your content, no matter the platform, an organized, tidy appearance, tone and message, come up with guidelines and editorial standards. Here are a few questions to help you create your guidelines:
- Are jokes okay?
- Are italics allowed?
- About how long should a blog post be?
- Should all Tweets contain images?
- Should all videos contain the same introductory message?
It does not matter how you answer these question. It only matters that you create content across all platforms that complements all of your other content.
Just Do It
Needless to say, the process of kickstarting your inbound marketing strategy content factory can be tough. But content creation is just like learning to play a musical instrument (or any other task that may seem difficult at first). When you start out, you are no good at it. It feels like it takes forever to figure out where everything is supposed to go, and nothing turns out the way you intended.
But as you keep going, it gets easier. And easier. And finally? You reach a point where this thing that had seemed so difficult now feels like second nature.
The same goes for content creation. When you first start, it is common to be very aware that you are creating content. Sticking to the style guide can seem unnatural, and keeping content as a focus for your business can be difficult. But as you continue with it, content creation becomes natural. The flow of ideas throughout your team bonds everyone, and you are less worried about making enough than you are about where all of it will go.
Creating and posting original content is important. The fact that it helps you sell more as your team bonds over ideas are great reasons to make content creation a focus in your business. Even though the task of content creation can seem overwhelming, you now know how you and your team can work together to effectively create content. So kickstart your business’s content factory today.
What intimidates you about kickstarting your content factory?
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: How To Kickstart Your Business’s Content Factory
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