I can’t tell you how many people I run into who say, “I don’t have enough content to create a content experience, let alone power all my go-to-market strategies!” Modern content marketers are hardwired to stress out daily over whether they’re creating enough content to fulfill their audience’s thirst for knowledge and insights.
They almost certainly are.
In fact, most organizations have plenty of great content. Sure, some of it may be dated, but hopefully, most of it is evergreen (or can be updated). With a simple audit, you’ll find you have a lot that would easily align to campaigns throughout the buyer’s journey.
To harness the power of effective content marketing and take ownership of your buyers’ journey, stop worrying about whether you’re creating enough, and focus instead on what you’re going to do with what you’ve already built.
Get the most out of your content
All too often, once it’s produced, great content is left to twist in the wind—unused and forgotten. But it’s still valuable.
One of my good friends, the Queen of Content, Ann Handley, refers to these pieces as homeless content. No doubt, your organization has its own homeless content: the decks your team uploaded to SlideShare, the videos you posted to YouTube, and all those sad and lonely infographics on our blogs.
Indexing may not be the sexiest concept, but it’s the foundation of building a world-class experience. With content indexing, you can:
- Understand and track all of your assets
- Make more informed decisions on what pieces to leverage when
- Reduce the likelihood that you’ll duplicate your previous efforts
The most basic version of indexing (that you can safely get away with) can be done in a spreadsheet. Simply list out your assets in the first column and then use the other columns to fill in the relevant details—such as format, topic, headline, CTA, persona, keyword, journey stage, and so on.
It’s easily searchable, and requires very little budget to set up and maintain. And with modern-day team collaboration tools, it can be an online internal resource that your whole team can access.
That said, it does require some time, and at some point, you’ll have more assets than your spreadsheet can handle. At that point, switching to a database or dedicated content experience platform (CEP) will help you better integrate content into your feed, no matter whether the asset is a blog post, a SlideShare deck, or a YouTube video.
Tools like a CEPs help you integrate your assets into one central location so you can easily take stock of what you have and where it can be used.
Own your content, own the buyer journey
It’s interesting how many definitions of content marketing refer to owned content, when in many cases, we end up housing it on sites we don’t own at all! YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter—these are owned by Google, Microsoft, and wherever Twitter lands one day.
Imagine you’re on YouTube watching a video about a Sony camera. As soon as it ends, YouTube recommends one about a Nikon camera, or maybe even a video of a cat taking pictures. The team at Sony probably didn’t plan on directing you to their competitor (or down a rabbit hole of cat videos, for that matter!).
I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t lend our content to these places for people to discover. Sharing on these external channels is a great way to gain exposure and hook your audience.
With every piece you publish, consider how you can bring the experience inbound. Then you can serve up your next great asset without losing prospects to the infinite scroll of other outbound channels.
You can end every video with a strong call-to-action, to help pull your audience toward more of your owned properties.
Or, you could stop relying on outbound channels to deliver your information. Get them inbound with that first tweet. Then you can follow up with another asset to help personalize the experience and guide them through their journey.
Well thought-out content is a powerful marketing tool. And when done right, it can help you own your customer experience.