- June 3, 2014
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Scale up, Get Scrappy: Improving Your Content Management Strategy
Your branded content leads a Rocky-like existence.
It’s out in the webosphere, day after day, scrapping for new visitors, leads, sales and subscribers, often slugging it out with much larger opponents — sometimes prevailing, other times taking it on the chin.
Maybe your content is fighting hard enough to be noticed. Then again, maybe it’s not.
Give Competitors a Turn on the Canvas
Writing for the Content Marketing Institute, marketer Taylor Radey suggests it may be time to “scale” your content marketing strategy — crank up the quantity and quality of content you’re producing to become a heavyweight contender in your space.
Here are some tips for integrated marketers, condensed from Radey’s recent article:
- Think it Through. Before scaling up your content arsenal, make sure to follow a thoughtful, brand-aligned strategy. Remember, hurrying through strategic planning is a bad habit that stifles creativity and lets inferior or half-baked ideas slip by and come back to sucker punch you later on.
- Know Your Flow. Establish the necessary workflow processes; identify who’s doing what and when. Make sure everyone’s clear on which team members will write and distribute your content, and which will monitor, manage and measure the results. Key to success: Enable shared access to a central repository of documents and status reports.
- Tap the Right Team. To broaden your content perspective, draw from your diverse in-house staff. Include Yolanda from Product Development. Tiffany from Marketing. Engineer Brandon and Frank the Designer. Even customers (and customer service reps) can contribute ideas for fresh, credible, authentic content. Once they understand the goal, most people pitch in willingly.
Start Strong, Finish Stronger
OK, you’ve checked the strategy. Established processes. And put experts to work producing new and exciting content. Congratulations, you’re scaling up! Now use these last couple of tips to deliver the knockout blow.
- Place Value on Value. This one’s easy to forget. Radey calls it ‘being selective’ about content generation. It simply means you should only create assets that promise a big bang for your buck. Identify which pieces best meet your audience’s needs and start producing them en masse. Have a small staff or limited resources? These content creation posts can save you time and perhaps some money — including this gem featuring actor-turned-content evangelist, Kevin Spacey.
- Befriend Your Data. Through these posts and others, our MarketingTango team routinely advocates the use of metrics and KPIs (key performance indicators). Data helps you identify top performing subjects and formats (white papers versus case studies, for example), and allocate the resources to capitalize on audience interest.
