Whether you believe it or not, your content sells earlier than your products. Content is what allows you to connect with your customers- both existing and potential. What you need to sell is, of course, important, but how you pitch your clients is more important. Arguably, the response your content generates is the most important.
Piero Fissore (Photo credits)It is through the content, both online and offline, that you educate your clients, make them realize the importance and utility of the product that you sell, establish a relationship with them and differentiate your offerings and company from others.
Content Becomes Legacy in Digital World
In today’s digital era, when you need to churn out the content more than ever, it becomes your legacy in the online world. Over a period of time, your customers buy your words, not your products. By discussing all this, I intend to say how important it is to have quality content and more importantly a well defined content strategy that drives your organization from one level to another.
If you’re in to selling online or just networking, you must already be creating content in some or another form. The time has gone when you were more concerned about selling and generating revenue to sustain. Now is the time to cash in on content marketing and considering the new ways and means to make maximum possible use of the content that you churn. All you need to think critically about content creation as well as using it in different ways.
Creating quality content is not sufficient. It doesn’t induce desired effect until it doesn’t reach your audience in the right manner at the right time and in the right sense. When you spend time on drafting a content marketing strategy, you will find numerous ways to present it, a number of platforms to publish it.
Creating Content Culture
Your content marketing strategy depends upon your goal. Are you only interested in engaging your target audience? What about your internal customers? This is something that most organizations have not given a thought ever. This is why they fail to leverage their content to its maximum potential. Your employees are your internal customers or let us say they are lifeblood of your company. In order to create a content culture, it’s important to start from within. When you involve them in the process of content creation as well as selling process, it gradually weaves into your company’s DNA.
Chris Winfield, the co-founder and CMO of BlueGlass Interactive (an internet marketing company specializing in data-driven content marketing strategies), explains the concept of weaving content marketing into your company’s DNA in one of his posts on MarketingLand.com. In his post, he explains how to create a company-wide content culture by evaluating the content ideas not for engaging clients but also for using it across all levels of your organization. Here are a few excerpts from his post, giving useful insights into creating content for your brand as a whole.
How Content Marketing Can Benefit Your Business as a Whole?
Business Development Team
The biggest problem with most businesses is that their content is a direct sales pitch. It is important to create a content that concurrently educates the customer while conveying the utility of the product. Additionally, the content regarding why you are a better service provider than others and what extra benefits you can offer also needs to be shared with the audience.
The best way to leverage the content is to present in such a way that it doesn’t look boring. Nowadays, people do not prefer looking at cumbersome graphs or lengthy tables explaining the facts and figures. Rather they are more interested in looking for quick information in precise form. Add a dash of humor in your marketing message but ensure that it clearly demonstrates the utility of the core product or service.
Involving your sales team in the process of content creation is a great way to use new ideas. As they directly deal with the customers, they have better insights into their likes and preferences.
New Employees
Make sure to create quality content that captures the attention of your potential employees and they know it beforehand what it means to be a part of your company. During their training, make every possible effort to reflect a strong content culture of your team. It is because, some of them may be writing your blog posts, articles or press releases for your company. You can also consider using the content from your older employees for training to familiarize them about how much you value content.
Employee Education and Entertainment
I bet most of your employees are happy with the fact that they are no longer in school. On the flip side, learning is consistent, lifelong. So, educate your employees in such a way that they don’t find it boring. Indulge them into conversations through your content in a fun way and ask for their inputs and suggestions. This way, they not only learn but also contribute to your content creation process.
The crux of the matter is that it’s not only you who needs to contribute to the content creation process. It should be the everyone in your company adding something new to the content.
Are you now ready to make content creation a company-wide culture?