You’ve heard it thousands of times: Consistently produce good content.
So, what constitutes good content? Quality content is that which compels, informs, entertains, or is a winning combination of all three. And whether you’re a retail or institutional firm, your competitors are out there vying for your audience’s attention with their own content marketing by way of press releases, articles, blog posts, social status updates, infographics, campaign offers, promotions, and sponsored content.
Now for the challenge of consistency. We understand that consistent content creation is a common challenge. Sometimes the idea well can run dry and often a lack of time equates to a lack of content. Marketing departments can find themselves distributing content at a prolific rate one month and zero the next. Through some strategic planning and teamwork this challenge can largely be solved for.
Here are 5 content marketing tips to help with consistent production and posting:
1. Document Your Content Strategy
According to Chief Content Officer Magazine, only 32% of marketers document their content marketing strategy. Write down your goals for what you want to accomplish with your content and share them with your team. Get everyone on board with your content mission. Stats show that you’ll be more successful if you put your goals to paper. It is important to have a purpose and road map for your brand’s content marketing and documenting it will clearly set forth the purpose of content creation and curation for your team.
2. Create a Calendar
Create a monthly content calendar. It can be helpful to develop a theme for the month to ensure that your topics build an archive of information around a particular subject matter. For example, a broker in the agricultural futures space could make wheat the theme for a month, producing relevant content around prices, production, farm technology, etc. And the next month, the theme could change to lean hogs, corn, soybeans, etc. By nature, humans are pattern seekers, so this is a simple idea that works.
It is also recommend that you post a mix of both timely content (e.g. “Oil gives up big price gains after Saudi comments, rise in inventories”) and evergreen content, which has a longer period of relevance (e.g. “One clear winner has emerged in the hedge fund space in 2016”). This mix will help extend your content’s shelf-life, help to broaden your audience, and help position you as abigger-picture thought leader.
3. Establish a Content Series
A simple tip to help ensure consistent posting is to develop a content series. For example, conducting an interview with a different fund manager or interviews with members of your staff each month for several months will help build the larger picture of what makes your company unique and will showcase value through the expertise of your team.
4. Mix Up Your Marketing Media
Brand content is not just relegated to blog posts on your company website. If you’re stuck in the same medium with your content, try mixing in a new format. Good content comes in several mediums: the written word, audio, dynamic presentations, video content, and visual images and infographics. It’s important to know the best medium to use, as the medium is also a message. If you have a lot of statistical data on, for example, marketplace lending, an elegantly designed infographic can effectively and efficiently convey a complex statistical landscape in an interesting visual format.
5. Rally Your MarkeTEAM
Tap into your team’s collective thought leadership power to help with content distribution efforts.
LinkedIn has shifted focus away from the company page to the individual and has opened up blog posts for everyone to publish content. Encourage your company and management team members to post engaging articles and posts to their LinkedIn profiles, Twitter, and other social media channels. This is a great way to have your team members professionally strengthen themselves as brand ambassadors, plus, now you have the opportunity to link back to your website with a call-to-action.
By using these 5 content marketing tips any marketing department can become more successful in the ongoing quest to post consistent quality content.
Need help with your content marketing? Contact us today!
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Sarah McNabb is Chief Marketing Officer at Gate 39 Media, a financial services marketing firm providing online marketing and application development for financial services across futures, equities, alternative investments and insurance.
Follow Sarah on Twitter at https://twitter.com/SarahMcNabb2016