Revitalize Your Content Strategy
Content has long been an integral component of a well-rounded communications program. But the changing media landscape and evolving company needs are forcing teams to rethink how they approach building, sharing and pitching this content.
For most companies, produced content has traditionally fallen into one of two camps: thought leadership-driven articles crafted by the communications team or sales-oriented and SEO-focused pieces produced by the marketing team. This split often lessened the prioritization of content as a business strategy, forced teams to operate in content silos, and led to missed opportunities to elevate each team’s individual efforts and maximize the overall amplification of each piece.
Still, this worked well enough when budgets were ample and there were plenty of outlets willing to take pitched content. But now, as funding dries up and outlets have been overrun by content submissions (some higher level publications have even begun to charge to run bylined articles), teams must evolve to stay ahead of the game and their competitors.
A reimagined content program that moves away from this split production method and instead prioritizes a communications-led content engine as a primary business strategy can put teams in a more advantageous position. By centralizing an in-house editorial operation, companies can more effectively and efficiently influence target audiences, serve a diverse range of internal constituent needs, and operate independently of traditional media outlets.
This has key advantages in that it aligns all content production within a central editorial calendar for greater visibility and accountability, up-levels the value of content within an organization, and produces a variety of pieces that can be used and amplified across channels by sales, customer success, marketing, communications and leadership teams.
For communications teams in particular, this strategy allows them to bypass increasingly difficult-to-reach press using regular, targeted content production, broaden a company’s bench of spokespersons, and cultivate stakeholder relationships more directly and effectively. Importantly, it leaves room for traditional press release and media pitching, even allowing for teams to cherry pick the best produced content to pitch for external placement. But it’s a subtle shift away from media-led comms programs to content-driven ones at a time when traditional earned media is proving harder and more expensive to secure.
Ultimately, we’ve found it enables teams to use their resources more efficiently and achieve company goals faster. It better positions a brand as a thought leader, puts businesses in more control of their content and messages, creates a more consistent rhythm of coverage, and produces consistent assets for the entire company’s operations.
To get it right, companies building a comms-led content program must:
Align Goals by Constituency
The advantage of managing an in-house editorial operation is its capacity to produce content assets in support of the entire business. This approach prevents teams from working in isolated silos, ensuring they do not miss opportunities for expanded reach and impact. To achieve optimal results, it’s important to enlist and engage all the key stakeholders so that you can build an editorial calendar informed by business goals and all program teams.
Design a Flexible Content Plan by Audience
Rather than build an editorial calendar by rigid company initiative or quarterly theme, design a flexible plan that ensures a mix of content by audience type based on thought leadership themes, topics, and audience while leaving room to respond to shifting priorities or market realities. The goal is to maintain a consistent publishing schedule across channels that avoids irregular gaps in content and serves all your internal teams without creating fatigue for your target audiences.
We’ve found it works well to structure these around tentpole moments like key conference podiums or regularly scheduled data reports, then work outwards to ensure each stakeholder audience is touched by some form of relevant content at appropriate intervals.
Leverage Channel Segmentation
Teams that are new to in-house editorial operations often get tripped up by overthinking a primary content channel. Should this be our blog, corporate LinkedIn or some third party option? The reality is that it’s all that and then some. A robust editorial program will take advantage of each of these channel’s strengths with specific audiences.
A company blog will play a starring role no matter if your customers are individual consumers or large B2B companies. Consider it the backbone of your program where 80% of content will live in some form. But it’s not always the primary publishing vehicle as it could just repurpose content already distributed via LinkedIn, external publications or social media platforms.
Many companies overlook the power of LinkedIn for content. While a number of brands use it to repost company announcements, leaning into both short- and long-form posts on executive pages can reach highly targeted networks of business customers, investors, influencers and more.
To maximize results, we also recommend identifying the very best pieces of content early on in the drafting process and pitching them for placement to industry trades or key business and innovation outlets, then amplifying them on a blog and LinkedIn.
Manage Resources for High Volume Production
Cadence is critical. You want regular, on-message communications of varying types and topics that make it easy for you to connect with customers, prospects and partners. These don’t all have to be 800-word exhaustively researched and carefully written opinion pieces. Oftentimes, we’ve seen clients earn meaningful engagement from several thoughtful sentences connecting a popular news article back to a company’s core product or purpose.
The key to continuously produce this level of content across audiences and channels is proper resource allocation - both internal and external. Identify multiple SMEs and a mix of internal and external writing resources, then set expectations. Ensure that everyone is held accountable for helping to identify content, source and research material, conduct interviews, and review and finalize pieces. In many cases, the bulk of writing, editing and distribution will be handled by external partners so internal SMEs can focus on their day jobs and only need to contribute in the up-front interview and then final review portions of the process.
As part of this, be sure to establish a streamlined content approval process for quick turnarounds. This can often be the most problematic step in a content workflow. It is crucial to identify who has the capacity and authority to provide approvals in order to guarantee that a promised level of content continues to regularly flow through final approval for timely publishing.
Choose Partners Based on Internal Gaps
While this is an in-house editorial program, it’s nearly impossible to operate effectively without partners and external resources. Very few companies have experience managing an editorial calendar and even fewer have the writing, editing and strategic resources necessary to execute it properly.
Before tapping writing or comms partners, first assess your internal gaps. Do you have a great operational leadership team but one that lacks thought leadership chops or struggles with visionary communications? Are your SMEs top-notch thinkers but don’t have strong writing skills? Do you need copywriters or editors to provide polish?
Be sure to recruit partners that understand your business and industry so they can add strategic and creative counsel, and who are willing to operate as extensions of your own team. Chemistry and work style are just as important as writing talent since you’ll be working on deadlines and with multiple stakeholders.
Track and Measure Results.
Lastly, track and gauge content performance by channel and team to understand engagement, solicit feedback and plan for future pieces. Learning who is engaging with content on Linkedin, how an email campaign is performing, and what is resonating with prospects will help shape how future pieces are produced and scheduled.
Ultimately, an internal communications-led content program can give companies new openings to build their brand and renewed control over how they communicate to stakeholders. By strategically integrating all content production and overseeing these efforts from a higher vantage point, they take the driver’s seat in shaping their narrative.
If you are interested in learning how to grow your business through a communications-led content program, reach out to us today.