One of the biggest barriers to sustained marketing communication is making sure you maintain consistent, relevant content creation that will be of interest to your marketplace. One way to address this is to remember that it’s not just about creating messages, by also looking at different ways to deliver your message, you can often use a single article 2, 3 or even 4 times without actually repeating yourself! Here are some tips as to how you can make the most of your creative outpourings:
Content creation for your E-newsletter? – NEVER
The old adage is that today’s news is tomorrow’s chip paper (before the boys and girls in Health & Safety (or Brussels or wherever) decided this is much too dangerous a practice!) Emails are incredibly transient, they are typically read and filed(!) – If they are read at all. If you simply publish your content in your e-newsletter it can be gone in an instant and people outside your circulation list can never benefit from your insight and wisdom. You and your communications are worth more than that! By posting content on your website (see below) and using email newsletters to signpost content with links through to articles, you can keep emails short and easy to digest while allowing those with time and interest to find out more and potentially have more of a browse around your site.
Content creation for your website? – ALWAYS
By adding your content to your website, in a ‘News’ section or other location as appropriate you are regularly updating your website. Google likes regularly updated websites. By ensuring that, as well as being interesting to readers, content also has relevance to your core business proposition and uses relevant keywords, you can have a positive impact on search engine optimisation as a bonus. When you add content to a ‘News’ section, it should always be dated. Most people I know who don’t date news posts only do so because they don’t post very regularly! When a visitor sees that your site receives regular new content, this shows that you are active and current – good messages I think. Regular new content on your website quickly builds an archive that visitors can access. Most ‘News’ sections include functionality to categorise content and automatically group information by month and year (WordPress offers this by default) This allows visitors to search your site and access the content they are interested in. All good, engaging stuff!
Look for opportunities to deliver guest articles
With the best will in the world most of us only have limited circulations for our e-newsletter – typically no more than a few thousand at best. Maybe there are opportunities to widen the reach of your content? This whole article is about the challenges of regularly creating new marketing content. It is a common issue and this creates an opportunity for you. Look for other organisations where there is a synergy with your own business. Do they have their own email newsletters or blogs? Sometimes they have a regular ‘Guest Post’ where they actively encourage relevant articles from others. It can be a simple case of getting in touch and offering some content for when they have a free slot. You then just select from your existing archive and send it over to them – job done and you get a marketing message out to a new group of people. You must pick content that will fit the ethos and message of the target organisation and that you expect to be of interest to readers. The fact that you have already posted the content on your own website and maybe used it in a previous email of your own matters less. Repetition sells!
Build a content network
Take the idea of guest posts to another level and build your own content network. Maybe you can invite others to submit articles for your own website/e-newsletters? As above, you need to ensure synergy and make sure that your own business message doesn’t get lost or diluted but articles from a wider network can deliver a more powerful impact to readers
Same content – different media
As a final twist on the theme, how about looking at delivering your content in different ways? Video is increasingly accessible and makes attractive content to web visitors. There is nothing to stop you having a go yourself using the video setting on your smartphone and free software that comes with your computer but there is no question that the input of someone who knows about video can make a big difference and these days doesn’t need to cost a great deal. Just remember you are not trying to produce Apocalypse Now. Keep your video short (2 mins max, 30-60 seconds is better). Keep your message simple. It is better to do a few short videos each focusing on 1 aspect of your business rather than trying to do a ‘Corporate Video’ In this world of the web, don’t forget off-line. Just think how few personalised, targeted, relevant mailshot letters you receive these days. Selective marketing through the post can have more impact than it did a few years ago, particularly when it is part of a joined-up multi-channel marketing programme. I hope you find some of these ideas useful. If you have any questions or there is anything you would like to discuss further, please get in touch.
