Content creation acts as the heart of effective content marketing. And, as a skilled creative practitioner, you pour your heart into your work every day.
It also takes a sharp mind to make effective decisions and helping hands to consistently transform fresh ideas and insights into resonant brand storytelling. Not to mention the stamina it requires to keep up with the ever-increasing demand for more and higher-quality output.
Sure, generative AI tools can assist with some tasks. Ultimately, it’s up to you to ensure your the elements are in place to engage audiences and convert them into customers.
These expert tips, tricks, and guidance can help make the creative aspects of your content marketing easier to manage and more likely to succeed.
I’ve organized this advice to answer the three most critical content creation questions:
- Who will create/contribute to the content?
- How will the content align with your strategic goals?
- How will you craft compelling stories that your audience will love?
Before you proceed: If you need a refresher on how to build the proper strategic foundation and secure stakeholder support for content marketing, check out these guides:
- 6 Strategies To Convert the Content Clueless in Your Brand’s Leadership
- How To Start (or Jumpstart) Your Content Practice
- Write a 1-Page Content Marketing Strategy
- 4-Part Guide To Crafting a Winning Content Plan
1. Who will create the content?
To determine the best creation model, consider factors such as the nature of your business, content competition, expertise required, and team and budget resources.
Among the options:
- Hiring writers for an in-house team: If your brand prioritizes original content creation, produces a high volume of assets, or needs content to fill multiple channels and platforms, full-time writing talent makes it easier to control the process.
- Leveraging internal employees and subject matter experts (SMEs): If your brand’s conversations require specialized expertise or technical know-how, involve colleagues from other organizational functions. You can also tap into the insights of executive management, sales personnel, product managers, or other employees. As CMI’s chief strategy advisor Robert Rose, points out, training your content team to be subject matter experts may be more effective than teaching SMEs to excel at writing.
- Outsourcing to consultants or specialists: Smaller businesses, startups, nonprofits, and other companies that aren’t ready to invest in full-scale editorial capabilities may work with paid contributors (including trained former journalists) or partner with a content agency or other creative service provider.
- Soliciting external contributors: A B2B business with a strong, subscribed community can ask industry thought leaders to write guest articles for its owned media platforms. These writers often share their expertise in exchange for valuable backlinks and exposure to new audiences. If your business has a B2C focus, enable your ardent fans and followers or relevant influencers to create user-generated content on your brand’s behalf.
- Exploring AI writing tools: More accessible technology has made artificial intelligence content creation a robust and affordable option for most brands. Even so, skilled (human) creators are still needed to ensure the content’s quality and relevance (and to maintain compliance with Google’s Search Essentials). But AI can be a huge time-saver for research, outlines, and first drafts or filling other productivity gaps in your creative workflow.
Shape your talent pool for marketing content creation
Get extra help determining a suitable creation model, skill sets, and operational structure with these talent-focused resources:
How will content align with your strategic goals?
Sharing compelling, valuable stories your audience will love is an admirable goal. Of course, a strategic marketing purpose must support that love fest.
Draw your target audience’s attention by creating content in the formats and types they prefer. Positioning your content to maximize engagement and conversion is also critical. Otherwise, you spin the content engine’s wheels without getting meaningful traction.
Achieving creative and strategic alignment is a top-down endeavor. Let’s start with the practical and tactical decision-making that should occur before creating a single word or image…Read More