This month, inspired by our most recent Pod Chat meetup, we’re talking about implementing content marketing and content strategy in real life. While we marketers often know that content marketing is a solid strategy for building long-term relationships with audiences we seek to reach, we sometimes struggle with executing it.

Here are a few helpful real-life tips on implementing content marketing to help smooth out some of the bumps along the road. 

Partner with Leadership

Content marketing is not well understood by many leaders outside of the marketing arena. Heck, even marketers struggle! But that doesn’t mean they won’t be supportive. Many leaders understand that growing a loyal audience, delivering value, and long-term success are all important, so frame your conversation on these points. In order to successfully implement content marketing, you’ll need support of the whole team, and your leaders will be critical in helping to get all the players on board.

Now...about those players...

Content Marketing Isn’t Just for the Marketing Department

A common mistake many marketers make is to keep their content marketing programs within their own department. We try like crazy to produce meaningful content, but with no help from other areas like sales, product development, service, or the technical team, it’s almost impossible to get some really relevant pieces for your audience. We find ourselves just regurgitating the same old marketing messages and they fall flat.

Instead, think of your content marketing program as a business strategy that requires involvement from across departments. While the execution may live in the marketing department, the subject matter comes from everyone. For example, when I worked in finance, marketing needed to gather ideas, feedback, and content from those in the sales and service departments. They interacted with the clients most often, and they knew the subject matter best. Marketing would ultimately assemble, write, or edit the content, get it approved, and publish it, but we needed their input to really make it valuable to the audience.

Consider even creating a content planning team and give it an official name. The team should be cross-functional, include leadership, and have a consistent cadence for communicating with each other. This will help give structure and priority to the effort, which ultimately will help it be more successful. 

Manage Change Wisely

Start your content marketing program with empathy and set your expectations reasonably. You’re asking others in your organization to participate in marketing and you’re taking time away from what their “job” is traditionally. At least, that is likely how they will see it.

When you—with support from your leadership—are asking for participation, be sure to talk with them about why their knowledge and expertise is critically important to the success of the organization. Talk about the customers/audience who would love to know more about the care we take in inspecting each product before it’s sent, for example, or the practice involved before a show is performed. 

You may get some pushback at first, so it’s important to communicate results as you go. If you show them how many people engage with different pieces of content, it will help them understand what audiences like and don’t like, and will help them to become better contributors. And they’ll be really excited when that content leads to business results like increased revenue, better efficiency, or growth of the organization in some way. That realization that their content helped to impact the business in a true, meaningful way creates an energy among staff and keeps the content flowing in. Ultimately, content marketing can help unite the team around a similar goal.

The last point I’ll add is that you have to stay organized and make it as easy as possible for them to help you. Be clear about your expectations. Ask specific questions. Give them deadlines. If you’re too wishy-washy about the process, they will think it must not be that important and they’ll procrastinate or stop participating altogether.

“And they’ll be really excited when that content leads to business results like increased revenue, better efficiency, or growth of the business in some way. That realization that their content helped to impact the business in a true, meaningful way creates an energy among staff and keeps the content flowing in. Ultimately, content marketing can help unite the team around a similar goal.”

Be Intentional

More content is not always better. In my experience, I try to advocate for quality over quantity. Each piece of content should have some purpose. It’s helpful when you start to set those intentions clearly through the use of a content mission, vision, and/or goal. State why the content marketing program exists, what its overall purpose is, and what the expected business outcomes are. Keeping that focus will help avoid tangents, rabbit holes, and off-the-rails content.

That said, the goal of content is not always to make a sale. This will be a tough one for some to get used to, but content marketing is more than just campaigns to drive leads or sales. Focus the goals more around the audience needs, building trust, and providing real value over time.

Start with Basic Categories / Themes

I was recently doing some content planning with a client and I asked them to think about the categories of content they think their clients would be interested in. It was difficult for them, and they focused a lot on very specific topics in terms of the service they offer. I had to pull them out of the weeds and help them see a 10,000 foot view of what their content could consist of. This is so common and it’s happened in nearly every marketing position I’ve had. When people are so close to the subject matter and the work they do day-in and day-out, it’s very difficult for them to step back and see it from their customer’s perspective. (More empathy needed here, too, so we don’t blame them for this. It’s not a bad thing.) 

As a marketer, you are in a unique position to help them take that step back and group ideas into basic concepts that a customer might be interested in. Listing categories or themes is a good place to start, and once you’ve given them some examples, they’ll find it much easier to come up with others you maybe didn’t think of. 

Having categories or themes also makes the content development / topic selection much easier. Plot these categories out on a spreadsheet, whiteboard, Google doc, or whatever method is easiest for sharing with your cross-functional team, and ask for ideas within those categories. It’s much easier than asking “What content would customers value related to our business?” It’s just too broad.

Pace Yourself

Content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint, (Clichés are annoying because they’re true.) and if you try to tackle too much all at once, it’s likely you’re going to overwhelm yourself and your team. Start your content marketing program with one or two tactics and become really great at producing, publishing, measuring, and adapting those tactics before branching out. 

For example, let’s say you want to provide exclusive content to your subscribers via email. Focus your efforts on this only—publishing for the purpose of sending it to your subscribers; topics that your subscribers care about; frequency that your subscribers engage with. Give it time to become a consistent practice (6-12 months minimum) and measure what those subscribers are doing (how they buy, how they share your content, how they engage on social, how they refer) to see if it’s better/different than non-subscribers. You’ll likely need to adjust along the way as you gather feedback from subscribers, but this is a program you can focus on and get really good at. Now, you can take a similar approach to other platforms or media, like engaging a YouTube audience, growing a podcast following, or publishing a print magazine for readers. If you tried to do all of these at once, I would bet money it would falter and lose support of your cross-functional team quickly. Pace yourself, be patient, and plan for the long-game.

Repurpose and Recombine

Creating one great piece of content not only gives you one great piece of content. It serves as a jump-off point for many other great pieces of content! Take this blog post for example; from this post, I will also be able to create:

• Quote graphics for social media

• Social media content sharing the post, even multiple times, each time focusing on a different point of view or new idea pulled from the post

• Content for my website

• Resource for my clients

• Presentation slides

• A script for a graphics video

• Email to subscribers about the post

When you take the time and effort to make a really great piece of content, don’t let it sit in just one place. Reuse and repurpose the heck out of it. This is a much better use of your time rather than trying to re-invent and re-create multiple different content pieces. 

Our Content Marketing Tech Stack

Here are a few technology must-haves when you’re implementing content marketing:

• Google Docs/Sheets as a shared space to collaborate, document, and reference

• Basecamp for managing content production projects, especially when you have multiple people involved who are being assigned tasks or deadlines

• Sprout Social is a Four Peas favorite for social media scheduling, listening, and engaging with your social audience; if you’re looking just for a simple scheduling tool, Hootsuite is a good option

• MailChimp email marketing platform; this is our preference, but there are many options out there; look for one that has solid integrations capabilities, modern design templates, easy list management, and custom form options

• Adobe Creative Suite or Canva to create consistent designs that reflect your content brand

There may be other tools that come into play, such as your website CMS, additional social media platforms, content production tools, design software, etc. But these are the foundational pieces we use. Have other content marketing tips, technologies or tools you’re using? Share with us in the comments!

We Can Help

Whether you need help planning your content strategy, getting the team together, or finding the right tools for your content, we can help! Send us an email with your questions or stop by one of our Pod Chats to talk with other marketers and get some new ideas. We’re here for you!