Every business has a story to tell, knowledge to share and news about what is happening within the company or organisation. From a florist, to a lawyer, to a hotel, each has their own niche to discuss with their current and potential customers.
Putting this knowledge and news down on ‘paper’, and publishing it on your owned channels (website, social media etc.), is a great way to inform and get potential customers over the line, especially if your goods or services require due diligence on the customer’s part or are linked to significant decision-making.
Customers might use a blog or article to decide which option you offer would work best for them, other ways to use a product, or learn about services you offer that they don’t currently use.
A lot of the time, customers will go to the company they feel has the experience to handle their business, and what better way to showcase your experience than by writing about current successes and marking key milestones.
Writing content can also be a great way to build the profile of your employees and leadership team; they could write an opinion piece that could then be pitched to media if appropriate.
So how to get started?
Your website is the first and most important place to house content. We advise that clients create a ‘content hub’, where news, blog articles and other content like videos and infographics can be regularly uploaded to one singular place (usually a tab on your main menu).
Commitment
We recommend creating a ‘culture of content’ – make it one of your key business values to share your news, knowledge and expertise with your audiences.
Making content creation part of your organisational culture will make it easier to commit to regularly populating your content hub. This is crucial, as if customers visit your website or social media a few months after their first visit and see that there haven’t been any posts for months, they will start to wonder why (even if it’s simply that you’ve been too busy!).
Three ways to stay committed:
- Reminders: You could set a reminder each month to make sure you set aside an hour to put something together
- Involve others: Perhaps there is a reliable staff member who could be put in charge of the task of seeking out content ideas. We’d definitely encourage getting as many of the team involved as possible; this means more ideas and it can be a morale boost to reflect on team successes and demonstrate their knowledge.
- Plan: Another way to keep yourself committed is by laying out a quarterly calendar, with key topics for each month and team members assigned to each action.
If you need help to get that spark, our team can run a brainstorm with you, or once you have some ideas, you can always ‘download’ them to HMC, and we’ll craft your thoughts into a winning content piece.
Don’t forget about the visual
We encourage our clients to move beyond the written word, and there are a range of tools that can help you create something visual without the help of a graphic designer. Canva.com is a great place to start for this, where you can create charts, infographics, social media imagery and more.
Others to try include: Slide.ly video ad maker, Lemonly.com for infographics and Biteable.com video maker.
