Marketers, rejoice! Most executives have bought into the idea of content marketing.
According to a recent survey from Kapost, 99 percent readily admit they need to produce a steady stream of ideas to be effective with content. Don’t assume marketing teams have an easy path ahead, because half admit they don’t have enough ideas.
The creative drain of content campaigns
Although marketers no longer struggle to convince higher ups that content plans are worth supporting, they do need to clear up confusion about how much work a successful strategy requires.
Content Marketing misconception:
According to Kapost, 80 percent of marketing execs say their teams have plenty of ideas to keep their content calendars filled. However, only 52 percent of marketing managers – the people creating and publishing the assets day to day – agree.
This is because it takes a lot of ideas to fuel a marketing strategy. Just how many?
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67 unique ideas per quarter
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251 unique ideas per year
That averages to about one idea per business day. If I asked you to come up with 250 content topics to fuel your brand’s campaign, would you be able to deliver, or would you run out of steam after 30 to 40 solid topics? Most individuals can’t do it alone, and the marketers surveyed say they don’t have a good way to crowdsource ideas from teammates and leaders.
You need a process to turn expert ideas into actual content
Brainstorming is useful for generating enough content ideas, but it only works if there is a process for turning those suggestions into marketing assets. A lot of businesses run into challenges when the people who generate topic ideas (executives, experts, thought leaders) don’t have enough time to follow up and produce them.
Check out this post for four common reasons why in-house strategies don’t pan out.
Time is a common challenge for businesses building content strategies. According to Kapost, it takes most individuals five to six hours – or almost a full business day – to write a single blog post. Your company’s thought leaders may not be able to dedicate this much time to getting their ideas down on paper so you can publish them.
This is why the most successful brands have a dedicated content marketing team that can interview subject matter experts and turn their ideas into engaging blog articles.
Content writers know how to take one topic, bring in fresh angles and distill the idea into multiple blog articles, infographic outlines and social posts. This transforms one subject into a full campaign, but also cuts down on the volume of ‘great ideas’ your team has to produce.
See how this looks in action: A one-team content marketing approach helped an IT client generate over 2x its average social shares and increase time on page 166 percent.
A sustainable content strategy provides long-term success
Reliable editorial teams are essential to content marketing success, but it’s equally critical to use content resources wisely. Most companies mistakenly treat content like it’s one-time-use only, when it actually has a long shelf-life and should be repurposed to provide greater value.
Kapost found 75 percent of assets are published once and forgotten in the archive, though the information may still be just as relevant and in demand.
Companies running out of fresh ideas should dip back into their content archives and see where there are opportunities to recycle top-performing assets for an even greater ROI:
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Statistics are fuel for graphics
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Original insights can inspire a white paper
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Quotes might spark the idea for a video interview
When there’s a demand for content marketing (and there is – 86 percent of businesses are producing content for marketing strategies, and 67 percent of consumers say content is more important to their purchase decisions than conversations with sales reps) companies can’t afford to invest and still come up short.
To become highly effective with content marketing, you need to spend wisely on strategies and build processes that prevent great ideas from falling off the radar or getting lost in the archive.
Want to learn more? Here’s our complete guide on repurposing content to get more out of your content.
