What Kind of Content King Are You? Benevolent or Autocratic? Something or Nothing?

We must begin to think of our brand as a platform from which all dialogue ensues. It is in this context that content creation and content marketing strategy becomes important. That is, unless you’re Seinfeld, and you think you can succeed in engaging your constituents in a conversation about nothing. It worked brilliantly for him; for most of us, it’s a non-starter. To paraphrase King Lear: Nothing comes from nothing.

What do you want to talk to your constituents about?  And what do you want to hear from them? If you want feedback from them, you have to ask for it in a compelling manner.  If you want money from them, you have to tell an inspiring story that catches their minds and hearts.

If we just run off at the mouth, that’s not good content.  That’s, excuse the expression, diarrhea.  Nobody wants our crap. If that’s all we’re giving our audience, then we shouldn’t be surprised when that’s all they give us back. Another letter from the CEO proclaiming how cutting edge we are and how many more people we’re serving since they last received the almost identical letter from the CEO?  Please.

 The key to good content is filtering through a user-centric agenda. This means we cannot be driven by pet interests of board members or program staff to promote a particular project.  If it’s not something we know our audience cares about enough to engage with us in a dialogue, then it probably does not belong in our core messaging strategy. People want news, personal stories and fresh ideas.

We must also translate our content so that it’s appropriate for the medium in which it will be delivered. In Is Creativity Missing In Content Marketing? Chris Perry contributes a great post to Forbes.com taking us on a little walk through the history of content marketing, including a link to the 1996 “Content is King’ essay by Bill Gates.  Mr. Gates made it clear – 16 years ago! – thatto be successful online we can’t just take what we have in print and move it to the electronic realm. He wrote:

Gates envisioned us all becoming multimedia companies as the Internet would become the “multimedia equivalent of the photocopier,” enabling content to be duplicated and shared with unprecedented efficiency. That’s why we hear so much talk today about multi-channel marketing.  It’s imperative for us to be in all the channels where our markets are. Yet we’re copying, sharing, retweeting, reblogging and repining so much that information overload is taking its toll. Pretty soon, our constituents ignore us.

Taking our bad copy-and-paste habits from the non-digital to the digital world won’t work.  It’s like taking the diarrhea that used to just go in the toilet and now spreading it all around the house.  It’s still crap.

The way to cut the crap is through understanding, relevance and creativity. In The Future of Advertising 2012: Hear It From The Ad Students, Scott Goodson discusses our need to earn attention through original ideas that go beyond republishing content we already have on the shelf. He exhorts us to keep in mind key principles: (1) understand that social media networks have different nuances, and all require active listening; (2) assure that production formats take into account the ways people consume and share information (i.e., tweets, links, reposts, etc. are all of different lengths and may/may not include video, audio, photos, illustrations and more), and (3) incorporate into content editorial calendars a vision that addresses demonstrated community interests.

Content
may be king, but it won’t get us any followers if it’s just recycled. This is where content curation comes in.  We can borrow from others, and even from our own archives, as long as we add a fresh perspective and perhaps a link or two to something that’s new (or newly of interest to our audiences). We don’t have to stress out and think we must reinvent the wheel every time. But we do always have to keep our brand in mind, and add something of value to the customer’s brand experience.

There are many excellent resources to which we can look for content marketing inspiration. Check Are You Content Creation Impaired? Here’s Some Tips and Resources by Beth Kanter. Also see the awesome infographic 22 Ways to Create Compelling Content When You Don’t Have A Clue and the accompanying post. And there’s a terrific post by Joe Pulizzi, co-author of Managing Content Marketing, highlighting what it takes to excel in this endeavor.  Also see: 50 Social Media Content Ideasfrom Convio; 20 Different Formats by Pro Blogger; 25 Basic Styles of Blogging, by Rohit Bargavda, and Ten Tips for Creating Killer Content by Hubspot. Finally, we can look to our own community to contribute content.  Check out this case study from Holly Ross at NTEN about how they got their community to help with content creation.

Once inspired, we’ve got to stop working in silos at our own desks.  It’s not only departments that work in silos.  Sometimes we become overwhelmed thinking we must write an annual appeal, a newsletter, an annual report, a blog and a series of Facebook posts within the space of a few weeks or days.  It seems overwhelming, but it need not be daunting. Because these shouldn’t be thought of as separate projects.  Connect them!  Repurpose your own content. In  5 Ways to Package Existing Content to Create More Content we’re treated to some concrete examples of ways we can repurpose what we’ve already created to work in a different medium.  

2-21-2012       The Winter of our DisCONTENT: Why, even with a content plan, marketing feels so cold to much of our audience

3-8-2012         The Cure for the Common Content

3-12-2012       R.I.P: Top 3 Things Required for Content to be King – And 17 Questions We Should Ask Before Embarking on a Content Marketing Strategy

3-13-2012       Who Ya Gonna Call? Content Curators!