Producing good content that meets the wishes and needs of your target group can sometimes seem impossible. Consistently creating quality content can seem like an even bigger challenge. The most important question for content producers is: how do you ensure that your quality content production never stops?
This is not an article that explains how to write good content or which underlines the importance of content or inbound marketing. This article is about how you manage to create a continuous stream of quality content for your business. With the help of these 5 tips you can easily keep your content production going.
1. Set goals and connect with potential customers
Many entrepreneurs and digital marketers see the importance of regularly writing a blog article for their businesses. SEO-friendly blogs help you connect better with your potential customers and also direct them from search engines to your website. You also show through knowledge sharing that you are an authority within your field and so on and on.
In short, the added value of producing content for your company is crystal clear to most entrepreneurs and marketers. The problem lies precisely in coming up with topics to write about. And not just that, finding the time to actually produce the content is another problem that has to be solved.
Before I zoom in on a number of useful tips to keep your content production going, I just want to touch on the importance of objectives and putting yourself in your customer's shoes. It is important to set goals for a certain period. And to see how you can achieve these goals with the help of quality content production. This gives you aim and direction.
In addition, it is important that you know who you are writing the content for. What problems do your potential customers have? How can you solve these problems? Prepare 3 to 5 buyer personas for your business. This keeps your writing more focused on the important things and also straight to the point. When you have adjusted both factors, you can get started with your content production in an efficient manner.
2. Disconnect the thinking process from the production process
We all know what it's like: you want to write a blog article, but the moment you sit in front of your computer, the inspiration to do so suddenly flies away! What should you write about? Which topic is interesting for your target group?
If every time you write, you first have to think about what you want to write about, then ultimately not much writing will be done. The conclusion is that all your valuable time has gone into thinking about a possible topic for your blog post, instead of actually writing the blog post.
A proven method to boost production is to disconnect the thinking process from the production process. You can do this by scheduling a content brainstorm and content mapping session periodically - for example monthly, quarterly or every six months. It is also possible to integrate these with each other, especially if you work within a somewhat smaller organisation.
i. Brainstorming and content mapping
Coming up with a content strategy is very important. This simply means that you take the time to plan your content production for a certain period - when to write and when to distribute your content. In practical terms, you and a number of colleagues can come together during such a session and brainstorm blog ideas and come up with a list of topics based on the organisation's goals.
Depending on the size of your organisation, it can be colleagues who work in sales, marketing, customer service and/or colleagues from the production department. Everyone has his or her own specialty within the organisation and looks at the buyer persona and content to be produced from their own perspective. During such a session you can, if necessary, have the session supervised by a marketing agency or experienced copywriter.
The purpose of the brainstorming and/or content strategising session is that you come up with possible topics that are interesting for your (potential) customers. Write all ideas on paper and then take the time to bundle them into groups or themes. For example, develop a theme for every month or every quarter into a campaign consisting of, among other things, a number of blog articles.
Make it as easy as possible for you and preferably even think of the title and headers of each article.
ii. Content planning
After the brainstorming session, you can then come up with a schedule which indicates:
Who will produce which content
What the deadline is
When the content is to be published and distributed
What the form of the content is (text, image, video, etc.)
On which channels the content will be distributed
Which skills, tools and (web) elements you need
And just like that, you have your content planning for the coming period! The advantage of this way of working is that you always have content that you can share on your social media channels, place in an email newsletter or use (online) in other ways.
You can print the planning schedule and hang it in the office, schedule it in the diaries or even digitise it in a project management tool such as Wunderlist or Hubspot. After that, it is only a matter of content production and making sure the teams meet the agreed deadlines.
3. Brainstorming sessions are great, but how do you come up with blog topics? When you start using the aforementioned method, it is important that you can also hit the nail on the head during a content brainstorming and content mapping session. As the organiser of such a session, you can, of course, do some preliminary work yourself, or have it done by a marketing agency or copywriter. There are many ways to get topics for your content production.
Below are some suggestions:
Consult statistics in, for example, Google Analytics, Google Ads campaigns, your marketing automation package, your e-mail software and other tools. View, among other things, what people search for, which content is frequently clicked on and which blogs are read the most. You can also see how many minutes people spend on each of your website pages.
Keep a close eye on your competitors and the strategies they use to attract customers. What are they talking about? And what do they fill their newsletters and social media channels with? How can you use some of their ideas for the growth of your business?
View the top 10 positions in Google for specific keywords that can also help your website/business. Which sites are on top? Why do they rank so high? What kind of content do they distribute? Analyse their articles/pages and think about how you can use some of their ideas for your business.
Pay careful attention to your surroundings. Your colleagues and customers are valuable sources of inspiration. What are the new trends? What are they doing that you can use? Which stories do they like to tell (about your company)? What kind of feedback are you getting from your customers? Is there negative feedback you can use to improve? What are the newest needs of your customers?
Be sure to make a list of all the content ideas that you see or hear from your surroundings. This way you always have a source you can look to when it feels like your inspiration has run out. Your list can also be useful to your colleagues if they also have a period where they can't find the inspiration for blog topic ideas.
4. Provide the right tools but sometimes let others do the work
At a certain point - if your content production starts bearing fruit, you will come to a point where you can no longer handle everything yourself. You probably become too busy to write, publish and optimise all your blogs. You can then choose to hire a copywriter or (extra) online marketer. On the other hand, you can also outsource tasks to a freelancer or marketing agency that supports you with content production and distribution.
If you choose to do the latter, keep in mind that your company vision, the knowledge of your products and services and the passion for what you do are with you and not the employees of whatever marketing agency you've outsourced your blog production to.
In other words, no one can talk about your company, brand and services as passionately and with as much knowledge as you. Therefore, make sure that you as a business owner or marketer always remain involved in the brainstorming and content mapping sessions and that you are kept informed of what is being published by the marketing agency. This way you can always make adjustments if necessary.
When you outsource your content production to a freelance copywriter or marketing agency and give them too much power, there is a chance that the content they produce will shift a little far from your vision and therefore no longer appeal to your customers. In short, make sure that they understand your company's tone of voice and you're actively involved in the content production process.
5. Create room for input from others
If you work as a copywriter or marketer in an (usually somewhat larger) organisation that has been involved in the production of content for some time, there will come a time when you will become increasingly dependent on your colleagues. Creating room for input from other professionals is very important. Make sure you involve your colleagues (more) in your production process.
Making room for input from others means that you have to devote more time to the content production process. For example, due to the fact that you have to plan an interview with a colleague or receive input from some other professional, a lot of time goes into the writing of one or more blogs. This also applies if you have to seek a customer's input as well.
Keep in mind that in that case the production takes more time and therefore wider planning is needed.
i. Involving colleagues
If you involve your colleagues more in your production process, it is very important that you make them think from a marketing point of view. They must understand the importance of content production and sales. Why is content being produced? And how does it push sales?
Here are some things you can do:
Provide internal information in the form of presentations and workshops
Share statistics and successes
Involve colleagues in the entire process: when compiling buyer personas, during content brainstorming sessions, mapping sessions, interviews, etc.
You may also ask that they help share the blogs on their LinkedIn profiles and other social media outlets.
Explain clearly to your colleagues what the goals are and how you work. Also answer their questions if they have any, and don't forget to share the results with them after the blogs have been published. Showing them the result of their input makes it more real for them. They will also show more support for your work. And if you have a good working relationship with your colleagues, they will (naturally) make more effort to provide you with input when next you come to them for advice. If the workflow is really good, they might even come to you with ideas, feedback and sometimes completely written blog articles.
ii. Support from management
Support from colleagues is important, but full support from your organisation's management is something every digital marketer could definitely do with. It is important that they too understand the importance of content production, and are (indirectly) involved in the process and offer support where necessary.
An additional advantage of support from management is that they can encourage your colleagues to help you with the production of content. If you want your content strategy to succeed, then the management of whatever organisation you work in must be convinced of the power of content. They must understand that it is a long-term strategy that can truly help the organisation both with web traffic and sales. If management does not understand what you are doing or does not see the added value of it, then your strategy is doomed to fail.
Finally, the consistent production of quality content is not easy. It is a process that takes a lot of brainstorming, creativity, teamwork and also feedback (whether positive or negative) from customers.
Tell us, how do you ensure a continuous stream of quality content for your own business?
Do you have any questions about this article? Please let us know in the comments section below.
