The Symbiosis Of Content Marketing And Company Culture
Fusing content marketing and corporate culture is easier said than done. Still want to do it? Here are a few tips on how to create a culture of content in your company without unwarranted risks or costs in the mix.
Build a brand and they will come.
Much to the dismay of 21st-century startups, the days when the slogan above ran true to form are gone. These days, a one-off go at advertising just won’t do the trick. If you want clients to come (and keep coming back) to show your brand their cash, you’ll need to woo them by your gift of the gab – and that’s precisely where content marketing comes in. Although the endeavor may turn out to be the most profitable move your business can make, fusing content marketing and corporate culture is easier said than done. Still want to do it? Here are a few tips on how to create a culture of content in your company without unwarranted risks or costs in the mix.
Develop a Unified Vision
The first thing you’ll need to tackle when looking to make the culture of content a pillar of your business success is to define the vision, strategy, objectives, and ways to achieve them. For successful content efforts and hitch-free daily workflow, the brand message and values have to be known to and shared by all key players, including writers, editors, and strategists.
With a unified vision in place, you’ll need to invest in employee training required for making the switch, and perhaps even consider new hires to build a strong content team tasked with content strategy development, ideation, content creation, and approval, as well as cross-departmental coordination and continuous development of your brand’s creative potential.
Style Guide That Fits the Bill
Based on the business objectives and audience approach methods, the content marketing team should develop a style guide including specifics such as content type, brand voice, writing style, target content structure, and use of visual elements such as brand logo, image, and graphics. The style guide will help achieve content consistency and efficiency and prevent editing and publishing delays.
You should also try and organize materials, including webinars, case studies, white papers, infographics, presentations, reports, newsletters, blog posts, videos, and other types of content to make the training for new hires easier. You can appoint one or more team members to be in charge of content approval, workflow and post-production tasks such as social media sharing and analytics monitoring to ensure peak ROI and client satisfaction.
Invest in Creative Potential
With the vision and style guide set, it’s time to recruit individuals (internally or externally) who excel at content marketing. Ideally, the content team should be made up of storytellers who know how to make the most of the ideas and insights they receive from other departments, such as customer support or sales.
For bonus efficiency points, different teams can brainstorm together during work hours: this is a great technique if you’re looking to spark creativity, improve inter-departmental collaboration and discover internal talent. Also, don’t forget to reward top content performers and foster a healthy sense of competition and keep constructive contributions rolling in.
Communication is the Key
To ensure seamless flow of content marketing efforts, you’ll also need to establish a system of communication across departments so that everyone would be up to date with their tasks and deadlines at all times. Streamlined communication and editorial and content marketing calendar available to all players will help the team stay on the same page as regards quality expectations, due dates, and distribution.
Also, you should always be on the lookout for client feedback as it can be an invaluable source of insights that can help your brand upgrade its marketing game. If you want to dial up customer feedback and engagement, you can drop a note on the company blog about your brand using first-class remote access software as an extra cybersecurity measure.
Keep Tabs on the Results
If you want top management to regard content efforts as a worthwhile investment, you’ll need to convince them it is producing results, and tracking audience response is an excellent way to accomplish that. The tools and instruments you use to scale the effects of the content marketing endeavor will depend on the industry, objectives, and company-specific KPIs, such as conversion rates, website traffic, etc.
Apart from conversion rates and brand visibility estimates, social media metrics can be a reliable indicator of your content campaigns’ success and content rating with the target audience. For bonus efficiency, you may want to consider using automated tools across distribution channels to hack rapid growth and take your brand’s content marketing game to the next level.
Clients will be impressed by your company’s tacit understanding of their needs and wants and its ability to provide for both, as well as your staff’s obliging attitude, competitive prices, speedy response, and delivery in full – but before you proceed to count your profits, you’ll need to weld content marketing into company culture and make it a backbone of future growth. Fortunately, if you’re still here, you now know how to do it, so go on and use these tips to build the content marketing ship that will take your business to the top fast.