In 1995, Steve Jobs was interviewed by Robert Cringely for a PBS documentary, Triumph of the Nerds. During the on-camera discussion, the future Apple CEO reflected on the notion that generating big ideas isn’t the same thing as being able to bring them to life in a valuable way. As he said, “There’s just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product.”
It’s a distinction that most content marketers are familiar with – especially if it’s your job to spin rough, disorganized insights and ideas into high-performing content gold.
From an outsider’s view, it can be easy to assume content creators simply generate imaginative ideas, write (or record) them, and then publish them as a blog post, email message, or other content piece. But while those tasks are certainly key parts of the creative equation, a lot more has to happen behind the scenes if those creative assets are to perform successfully as a marketing vehicle – i.e., get found by the right audiences, drive meaningful conversations with them, and compel them to take action.
Ready to discover the secrets of producing well-conceived, well-written stories? Read on for a handy tutorial on the essentials, along with resources that can help take your content creation to greater levels of success.
Before you proceed: If you aren’t confident you have the right foundation in place to support your creative efforts – or just need a quick refresher on a particular topic – you may want to take a step back and review our previous Road Map to Success guides:
A practical view of content creation
There are three main areas to consider when it comes to establishing and activating your organization’s content creation capabilities:
- Who will create/contribute to the content?
- How will our creative efforts align with our strategic goals?
- How do we craft compelling stories that our audience will love?
1. Establishing your content creation model
There are multiple ways your business can assemble its content creation force, each offering a distinct complement of pros, cons, and practical considerations. To determine the best contributor model to work with – and decide whether to use it in combination with other approaches – you need to weigh factors like the nature of your business, the competition your content will face, the level of expertise your content will require, and the team and budget resources you have. Here are some examples:
- Hiring a dedicated writing staff: If you place a higher priority on content creation, want to produce a high volume of content, or need content to fill multiple channels and platforms at once, it may be worth having full-time writing talent so you can maintain control of the process.
- Leveraging internal subject matter experts: If your content requires a high level of technical know-how or other specialized expertise, you may want to incentivize your executive management, sales teams, or other fellow employees to contribute content.
- Outsourcing to freelancers or other specialists: Smaller businesses, startups, nonprofits, or other companies that aren’t ready to invest in full-scale editorial capabilities may prefer to work with freelance writers (including trained journalists), or to partner with a content agency or other creative services provider.
- Soliciting external contributors: If you are a B2B business that has a strong community of subscribers, known industry thought leaders may be interested in guest blogging on your owned media platform in exchange for valuable backlinks to increase their reach and exposure. Or, if your business has a more B2C focus, you might look to enable your ardent fans and followers to create user-generated content on your brand’s behalf.
- Automating the process: While content creation via artificial intelligence is in its early stages, there’s every indication that automation will play a significant role in content marketing in the near future. Brands willing to invest in and experiment with the technology will be poised to make a big splash, leaving their competitors behind in the kiddie pool of AI-driven content innovation.
Shape your content creator pool
Looking for more assistance with determining the right creation model and putting your contributors’ talents to work? Check out some of our top resources:
2. Aligning creativity and strategy
Sharing compelling, useful stories your audience will love is an admirable goal for any content brand. But, of course, there needs to be an effective marketing purpose supporting that love fest. In other words, if you aren’t working with the right content formats and types to draw the attention of your target audience or aren’t positioning your content in the right way to drive engagement and conversion, you’ll keep needlessly spinning the wheels of your content…
