What do you think of when you think of business assets? Many of us are likely to cite the more tangible things a business owns: computers, desks, equipment, even factories. Some people may see staff or employees or the company’s brand and reputation as assets. But what about the content that a company creates?
This, too, is a business asset and one that is often overlooked when people are taking stock of the things a company owns or when quantifying its value.
“Content is an important business asset, and companies need to think carefully about how they create, curate and manage it,” said Ann Naumann, senior content marketing manager with A Place for Mom, the largest referral service for senior living in North America.
To understand best practices around this activity, Ann shares the following tips:
- Begin with the big picture and your overarching strategy. Know what you’re trying to achieve with content and how it will benefit your company or organization. It is a
good idea to have a documented content strategy as well as a content manifesto. Think of this as a short description of your key messages and your perspective about them. What is your messaging platform? What is the emotional content of that messaging? - Know how you’ll measure success and be able to calculate your return on investment. For instance, what are all the results you derive from the content you create? How will you quantify those results? Are there quantitative results you’d like to see? By answering these questions, you’ll be in a better position to understand and analyze the impact of the content you create.
- Create an editorial calendar. Once you have articulated the vision, mission and value for your content program, it is a good idea to develop an in-depth editorial calendar. In this you can identify themes you want to explore and determine the ideal timing for content creation. Your editorial calendar doesn’t have to be fancy. It can be as simple as a list of topics and the dates when you want certain content completed and/or published.
- Don’t underestimate the power of the creative brief. For specific content, you may also want to develop a creative brief. Information in this brief often includes:
- The persona of your reader or readers. How old are your readers? What are their interests and desires? Why will they care about your content?
- The ideal length of the content you want to produce. How many words will be required to cover the topic? What is the attention span of your reader?
- The key words to be included. Oftentimes, people discover content by doing searches on keywords, or perhaps they have Google alerts set so news and information is pushed to them. If so, you’ll want to identify these keywords and include them in your content. This will make it easier for people to find it when they do online searches for information
- Where your readers are in the buyers’ journey. There are many different ways to describe the path readers take to their final destination. The ones Ann Naumann uses are Awareness, Research, Consideration, Decision and Advocacy. Understanding what need you are fulfilling will help you create better content and will also help you think about what the best next steps are for that reader to take.
- The style and tone to which the piece should adhere. This often refers to things like word choice, sentence structure, formatting, punctuation and even spelling. For instance, should you use a formal or informal style? Are contractions OK or should they be avoided? Do you need to adhere to Associated Press style or some other style guide? (Some people include this in writer’s guidelines, but I like to make sure it is in our creative briefs.)
- Publication and promotion. How do you plan to promote your content? After all, if no one reads it, you’re essentially cutting down the proverbial tree in the woods and wondering if anyone heard it.
- Understand your workflow. Consider these critical steps: ideation, creation, publication and promotion. Your workflow is how you connect the dots between these steps.
- Adopt technology solutions carefully. The martech stack is growing. There are tons of good tools, but before you adopt one, it is a good idea to understand your content creation and publishing process. Consider simple tools before you adopt a more complicated automated workflow tool. It might be overkill for you.
Understanding that content is a business asset is essential, as is the process in which content is created. For those of us in marketing, public relations or communications, part of our responsibility is managing the development of compelling content. What are some of the ways that your business or firm creates and manages content?