Content struggles: Are you overlooking your internal sources?
The need for meaningful content in today's condition of always-on marketing and communications is an ongoing struggle for many organizations. In my experience as a marketing leader and consultant, I have encountered brands, departments, and producers stepping over content sources to tell me they can't find content to fill their calendars. My favorite example of a producer stepping over a treasure trove of content came as a former leadership role expanded to oversee organic and paid social media for a large organization. I met with the social media leader to understand why a multi-billion-dollar retailer could generate up to a post per week if even that. The producer woefully said, "We don't have any content for posts."
Content from Within
On the path to my office, this social media producer literally walked by an experienced certified cheesemonger and a table of freshly launched private-label specialty products. In addition, the office next to mine housed a meat and seafood category leader with over twenty years of expertise. Earlier that day, corporate comms shared pics and the story of a retail location helping a local community food bank.
Suppose you read this and need help finding the content opportunities in the previous paragraph. In that case, you are missing the potential to establish Team Member expertise, introduce product innovation, and tell a brand's community story in your shared content. For example, a cheesemonger could quickly draft recommendations for a dinner party cheese and charcuterie board.
Likewise, an experienced meat merchandiser can provide tips on selecting the best beef cuts. The recently launched private-label products could certainly be featured in a social post with tasting notes and ingredient descriptions. And imagine the pride of those retail Team Members when their efforts with a local charity are shared across the company's social media feeds.
Too often, marketers forget to look within to uncover and exalt the organizations' distinct points of difference and Team Member expertise in their content calendar. Content derived from your own organizational assets and people is truly unique to you and illustrates why your customers and followers should choose you over your competition.
Engaging your team members in content creation can engage them in the organization, and create a great employee experience at the same time.
Ideation and Differentiation
Meaningful content that creates compelling stories and gives the reader a useful customer experience is closer than you think. The next time you and your team find yourself looking for ideas, ask a few simple questions to ideate and create differentiated and ownable content:
What defining skills or expertise do your Team Members possess that can help and entertain your customers and followers? How can this experience be applied to guiding seasonal or cyclical purchase occasions?
Does your customer base know your organizational mission, vision, and values and how they are applied to daily operations? Can you share compelling examples of values in action?
Are you getting credit for the organization's community and charitable engagement efforts and the supporting actions of your Team Members? Have you scanned your social feeds for positive customer interactions, feedback, and user-generated content worth sharing?
Are you celebrating and thanking your Team Members for positive customer interactions and instances of going above and beyond? Can you feature milestone anniversaries and promotions in social posts?
Content is everywhere, you just have to know where to look.
Quality content and the content experience of your brand messaging is one of the key ways to engage customers to create a relationship and loyalty to the brand. With our customer experience focus for marketing, we discover and deliver ways to engage customers through identifying the right content for the right place in their buyers journey.