So much to produce. So little time to produce it.
By now you understand that content is essential to contemporary marketing. There’s a direct relationship between marketing success and the quality and quantity of content. But creating a continous flow of it represents a problem for most companies. That’s why content is at the top of the list of modern B2B marketer’s concerns.
Like most big problems, it helps to break it down. Let’s start by identifying the 3 types of content you can leverage:
- Formats: There are four primary formats you can consider including Video, Audio, Text, Photo/Images.
- Original vs. Third Party: Content can be produced by your team (original) or it can be procured or borrowed from a third party source.
- Long form vs. Short form: Content can be in long form taking 5-30+ minutes to consume, or can be short form and digestible at a glance.
Given the vast array of possibilities, it’s important to rank content on key attributes including:
- complexity
- cost to produce
- ability to repurpose
- overall effectiveness
The graph below plots (somewhat subjectively) how content types spread across a continuum… a continuum to help attack the conundrum!
Ideally, you’ll be able to build and maintain a diverse set of content that takes advantage of multiple formats, sources and lengths.
How to take one piece of content and turn it into a dozen.
Original long form content is the most complex, time consuming and costly to produce. But if you take the time to produce just one of the big ones, you can easily turn it into a dozen or more smalls.
Let’s use long from video as an example. Say you film that hour long roundtable discussion you hosted last month. This becomes your primary content – A base from which you can create lots of pieces. Start by getting the video transcribed. Then create a long form copy/text version. Find 2 or 3 great standalone quotes. Create text excerpts, photo grabs, and short video clips of the important moments. Then translate the whole thing to a podcast format and create more “minis” from the “best of” reel.
Podcasts may be the new secret weapon
Podcasts are one of the most underutilized content formats. More than half the population has listened to a podcast and this number continues to grow. But surprisingly, very few B2B marketers are producing content of this type.
Podcasts are particularly helpful in that they can be consumed while multi-tasking. That’s why nearly a quarter of those who regularly listen to podcasts do so in the car. What’s more, they’re relatively easy to produce. With a low budget microphone, or just your iPhone, you can capture conversations in a meeting or lunch that you can later edit into audio soundbites. Tools like Zencastr provide crystal clear recordings of remote interviews with separate tracks for each participant, a soundboard for live editing and automatic post-production.
What makes content effective?
Effectiveness is ultimately measured by how well your audience consumes it and how well it allows you to achieve exposure and authority in your market. For social media, engagement rates including likes, shares, comments, and follows, are indications of success. Additional measurements include sales, lead quality, web traffic, onsite engagement, subscriber growth, and successfully optimizing your rankings on search engines. Ultimately, the ROI of content will equal the revenue gained minus the cost to produce and distribute.
Before you distribute your content, see how well it passes the “sense check” with these 10 questions:
- Does it address a specific business problem?
- Is it compelling and relevant to my audience?
- Is it mapped to customer personas?
- Is it aligned with my value proposition?
- Is it produced in digestible format?
- Can I repurpose it in alternative formats?
- Is it unique (not available elsewhere)?
- Is there a clear reason to consume it (headlines!)?
- Can I test it against alternatives?
- Is it mapped to my editorial calendar?
Do you need help executing these content strategies or want to learn more about how to make them work? Find out how FMG can help by clicking HERE.