How to keep up with (and even get ahead of) the demand for content
The pressure to keep up with the demand for content is exhausting. Whether it’s your own drive to create great content, pressures from others in the business, or trying to keep up with competitors, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.
There’s no doubt businesses are factoring content into their planning – on average, B2C marketers are spending 22% of their marketing budgets on content, and B2B survey respondents are spending 26%, with both groups expecting budgets to increase in coming years.
But there’s often a gap between the goal of delivering great content, and the execution. And that gap often comes when the business is in a space of being reactive, instead of proactive.
Do you feel like you’re chasing your tail and can never get ahead?
Maybe you’re producing a high volume of content, but the quality doesn’t feel like it’s quite there?
Or perhaps it’s the opposite – you’re investing in high-quality content, but it feels like you could be getting more out of your budget?
Whichever way you’re experiencing it, the demand for content can make you feel like you’re drowning – and it’s all you can do to keep your head above water.
But let me tell you a few things.
I’ve managed content teams in house.
I’ve commissioned agencies and freelancers to produce content.
I’ve worked in agencies, delivering content to clients.
I’ve worked as a freelancer.
I now run a team of copywriters.
In short, I know a thing or two about getting the most out of individuals, teams, agencies and freelancers to produce high volumes of content at a high quality (and with non-outlandish budgets).
I am absolutely positive that you can flip the switch from reactive content creation to proactive. Even during times like these where working remotely poses fresh challenges.
I’ve seen it happen. I’ve made it happen. Here’s how, in 6 steps:
1. Get your content strategy sorted: create content pillars
Content pillars are the overarching key areas of focus for your content strategy.
For example, if you manage a fashion brand, the content pillars might be ‘Trends, Sustainability and Products’. It could also be ‘Look good, feel good, do good’. For a superannuation brand, the content pillars might be ‘Planning, Retirement and Products’ or ‘Sustainable future, Ageing gracefully and Products’.
They could be anything that helps you provide a framework of content that will help and inspire your customer, and help your business work towards its higher purpose and live its values.
These pillars are the foundation for your content, as part of your content strategy. Without them, you’re using a scattergun approach and probably being highly reactive.
2. Develop content suites
You’ve no doubt heard about repurposing. It’s 100% what you should be doing, but the problem I have with the term, is it kind of implies a lack of planning – which means you’re not really getting ahead.
Instead, think about creating ‘suites’ or ‘batches’ of content upfront.
These content suites are groups of content that all work towards a single point of focus. For example, for product-based businesses, there will always be a suite of content required for product launches and updates. All businesses usually would have seasonal content requirements, so there be seasonal suites, for example around the end of financial year or Christmas. There might be promotional suites around special offers or discount, or there could be an annual report suite, or an event suite. The list goes on.
You can also have ongoing brand content suites specifically for each of the pillars that form a suite. The point is that there will be things that your business does on a regular basis that you can identify, understand what you need for each, and commission or produce as a suite.
These suites should include:
⁃ Hero content - a higher investment piece/s, such as inspirational photography, videos, thought leadership pieces, or white papers. This could be your advertising campaign.
⁃ Hub content - spring boarding from your hero content, create engaging shorter form content such as short articles, blogs, eBooks, and videos.
⁃ Hygiene content - figure out what questions your customers will be asking, and answer them through helpful content such as articles, social posts and infographics.
Ideally, you want to produce all the content that is in a suite at the same time, in advance of when you need it. Your brief goes out to your content creators (in-house or external) with a list of content deliverables. It means taking a planned approach, instead of chasing your tail and being reactive.
I can hear you thinking ‘Well that’s obvious, of course we want to produce it ahead of time. But HOW?’ The answer is, you have two options:
- Start small – introduce one suite every six months or a year, then two, then step it up as you need.
- Or throw some extra resource at it – be it headcount, freelance or agency – and break the back of it.
As long as you start somewhere, you’re getting ahead.
And for brands with smaller budgets, you don’t always have to have high-spend hero content. It could be that hub and hygiene content work just fine. The goal is to identify up front what content you need, and figure out how to achieve it with your teams.
3. Get your GUN team
You need the people on your team to make the magic happen. Your team can be comprised of:
⁃ Internal marketers with broader-based skills who are responsible for both the creation of, and distribution of content
⁃ Internal marketers with specialised skills, some who are responsible for the creation and others who are responsible for the distribution
⁃ Freelancers (copywriters, producers, photographers, designers, illustrators, etc)
⁃ Agencies (big or small)
How you build your dream team is up to you. You could totally rely on creating the content all internally, or you could push it all externally through agencies. Personally, I prefer a hybrid model - get the best staff, freelancers and agencies with specialist skills to focus on what they do best. That way you have the agility to scale up – or down – as you need to.
I’m seeing a lot of my clients get bogged down in even more meetings than ever before. If you find that you’re spending all your time on Zoom, it’s worth considering outsourcing the execution as much as possible so that you can focus on strategy, planning and influencing your colleagues.
4. Set realistic budgets
When you produce batch content, there are loads of efficiencies because your teams are highly focused and clear on outcomes. Put simply, there is less wasted effort, and a greater output. And while those efficiencies should flow through to your bottom line – be it through greater output for the same budget, or even reduced budgets – you need to be realistic.
For example, it’s ok to ask a creative agency to capture more photographs at the big hero campaign shoot – but know that you may need to put aside budget for additional time for shooting on the day, as well as image selection and retouching. You’re still maximising your budget because you are leveraging all the talent at the shoot, but you’re not asking for blood from a stone.
And for written content, if you commission a white paper, it’s ok to ask the content writer to write a series of short articles and social media posts to support – but make sure you budget for those articles and social media posts. There will be some efficiencies in time for research, but time and skill are still required to craft the other pieces.
5. Take a templated approach
Standardise as much as possible. Get a suite of templates for things like:
⁃ Briefs
⁃ Website pages
⁃ Blog posts
⁃ eDMs
⁃ Video content (intros/outros etc)
⁃ Social posts
⁃ And so on…
The templates don’t need to be elaborate – they can be as simple as a Microsoft Word or Google Doc. The important thing here is they prompt you for what you need. It’s incredible how common it is for content creators to start with a blank page - and it really slows down the process. Not only does this make it incredibly hard to even start creating the content (if you’ve ever stared with dread at a blank page, you’ll know what I mean), it also can mean that you get to the end of the approval process and something important is missed, like the subject header of an email or the logo at the end of a video. It’s wasted time. Repeat after me: templates = saved time.
On the topic of templates, this is where style guides come into play. A detailed brand style guide, which includes design, image and video guidelines as well as tone of voice, is invaluable. This is where you put the work in upfront, and buy yourself time further down the track.
6. Streamline your processes
It’s boring, but essential. Quite possibly the reason why you’re always chasing your tail is because content is just taking too long to get through the gatekeepers.
Identify the stakeholders, and put in a firm process. Try things like:
⁃ Engage early with key stakeholders to bring them on the journey of content as a work-in-progress. Don’t wait until something is perfect before sharing it.
⁃ Hold weekly WIP meetings where content is shared - whether final or in-progress - to get stakeholder approval.
⁃ Use online collaboration tools like Asana (which I’m obsessed with!), Miro, Trello or Slack.
⁃ Have a hard deadline for feedback – and factor in buffer time.
Be firm about your processes – and be realistic about your expectations. The situation not going to change overnight. I’ve worked in teams where we’ve had to revise one eDM 14 times (I know you feel my pain!). Over time, as we worked more collaboratively with the teams, we reduced this to one or two revisions. And look, there will always be that peccadillo that goes several rounds of revisions, to everyone’s dismay – things will never be perfect. But they will get much better.
Real process improvement starts from the top. You have to use your influence to make sure that the management team understands the importance of timely approvals. Use data to support this - my team have an average of X revisions which take them Y time which = Z wasted hours. Our goal is to reduce this, so we can spend our time on the more important things.
Keep on swimming
Stay resilient and keep focused on the goal. You’ll get there. It’s the culmination of all these little things – as well as a big focused push at the beginning – that will help you get ahead in time. Hang in there!
Want to chat about anything in this article? I’d love to talk - drop me an email and we can tee up a call.