Unless you’ve been stuck on a desert island for the last couple of years, you may have heard one or two conversations around the notion of ‘content’ being ‘king’ and that your company should be adopting a ‘content everywhere’ approach. Sound familiar?
All businesses understand that the way we consume media has changed dramatically and that they need to do something about it. They know they need to be on social media, they need to be spotting the gaps and opportunities in search, they need to be having a more transparent relationship with their customers. We all get this.
However, many companies get anxious when they hear experts saying ‘we are all publishers now’. In a post Web 2.0 landscape this may seem so obvious now – so why is it still hard for some companies to accept?
Understanding the client’s pain points
The reality is many businesses are just not set up in the way media companies are – many don’t have the inhouse resource, budget or willpower to devote to generating content. Managing content spans multiple departments and needs buy-in from a central stakeholder to start the process. But when those departments are under-resourced with critical deliverables ahead, can you really expect businesses to become content first?
As one client said: ‘Look around, no one gives a f*** about the website’.
That might sound ignorant – but that came from a senior manager who was trying to protect his team from having to produce constant site updates that didn’t have immediate ROI.
It’s a valid point because any content strategy not aligned with core business objects is asking for trouble. So let me talk about the value of content very clearly:
- Investing in content does not mean launching a kind of ‘online magazine’. It does not mean suddenly committing yourself to an editorial calendar your team just can’t sustain.
- Investing is content means taking an objective view of your content and asking yourself ‘does it really hit my business objectives?’ and ‘will my customers care and want to share when they read this?’
- Investing in content actually means cutting away at irrelevance across your business. In some cases it may even mean producing less in order to have greater impact.
- Investing in content means identifying the gaps and opportunities that will give you the competitive advantage. But be warned, these opportunities don’t last forever – if you don’t move now then your competitors will.
- Investing in content will bring you closer to your audience – if your content is user-centric and distributed correctly then you can take advantage of feedback and adapt accordingly.
In conclusion
Remember, your audience doesn’t care about your sales process and they couldn’t give a fig about your objectives. Your audience only cares about itself and the questions they need to solve right now.
Invest in content and you’ll be able to answer those questions.
Have you any thoughts on the topic above? Please feel free to leave your comments below.
Steven Wilson-Beales
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