When we think about the etymology of certain words, the word “content” is a loaded term. While humans today typically think of this word within the context of consumable media, this word can also be used to describe a state of satisfaction, is both singular and plural, and can be utilized as an adjective, verb, or noun. But the word “content” can also be ascribed to the things that are held, or included in a containing object. Ultimately, this means that content—be they physical items, or snippets of information—is a word to describe that which is contained.
Though content cannot be anything, and certainly is not everything, when we talk about content in relation to brand experiences, we are talking about the value-generating offerings that are contained within the brand. To be clear, note how I did not say “consumable,” “lead-generating,” or “sales-driving.” Instead, the key is value-generation—which is in its truest sense, achieved by providing the customer with useful information, products, or services, that do not require them to make an immediate, or long-term buying decision up front.
If your first thought to all of this is, “Well, how can content be profitable if I am not asking for a buying decision?” I think it is time to reassess the role of content in a marketing vertical. It is not that content isn’t profitable, or cannot generate sales. It is just that you will be hard-pressed to find out how any one piece of content in your library of available offerings is directly connected to a buying decision. For such reasons, it is not that content isn’t capable of generating sales, so much as it is that content is not really a type of marketing that is designed for sales attribution. Therefore, content is usually more effective at generating sustained brand interest—which can lead to sales inquiries through cultivated trust—than it is at hitting hard and fast sales targets.
So then why do it at all? Easy. Because like the tools in a toolbox, different techniques in a marketing vertical are used for different things. If your work relies on performance marketing, as well as hard and fast results such as sales conversions, then distribute a newsletter, or run some fucking ads. These tools have clear-cut methods for tracking results, and achieving channel growth—so developing best practices is hardly rocket science. But if you are more concerned with cultivating brand interest, facilitating brand engagement, and sustaining brand loyalty, then content creation is a major part of your toolbox—and an over-reliance on promotional newsletters and ads is tantamount to a self-inflicted death sentence.
Like all things, however, the reality of what comprises the work of digital marketers is somewhere in between. Businesses engage in the practice of marketing—and by extension rely on the work of marketers—because they intend to drive sales. At the same time, businesses want customers to give a shit about their brand but also know that this cannot be done solely through formal pitches. In the end, this portends to the reality that a hybrid approach which includes both formal advertising and content marketing, is really what defines most marketing success in the modern day.
In Part 1 of my content product series, I discussed the importance of setting qualitative standards for your work, as well as determining what makes you different, and what types of SEO terms you will target. By contrast, the role of part 2 is about fleshing out your content from a mere idea to bearing the necessary characteristics that allow for it to be an additive component of your brand. How we get there, is by leveraging channel selection, smart production scheduling, and journey mapping to establish a value-generating framework for building customer interest and sustaining customer loyalty.
Without further adieu, let’s get into it.
Establish Technical Specifications
Before any conversations can be had about creating a strong standalone brand, channel selection, or deciding what to talk about, the first thing we must do once we understand our barometer for achievement—as well as what makes us unique—is to put in place a technical spec for the content that we are trying to produce. The purpose of this technical spec is to establish hard and fast standards that govern when a project is considered topically appropriate, qualitatively up to standard, or even sufficiently unique. Most crucially, it defines the hard and fast production guidelines for the media that we are producing.
For as esoteric as this might all sound, luckily, this process is easier done than said. The way one establishes a technical specification is based on two methods. The first is by identifying the ways in which their target audience consumes content. Different audiences will consume content in different ways, portending to diverse needs. Based on the findings gathered through research, you can eventually identify the different variables that allow for certain types of content to be successful with your group. Targeting academics with a penchant for content that has nuanced detail? Then perhaps a long-form, nuanced medium such as blog posts may be an appropriate content choice. Is your audience younger and impatient? Probably a short-form video. Targeting former radio listeners? Obviously, a podcast format will be successful here—but so would a long-form “panel” style video, or even a filmed podcast would. Of course, these are extremely basic examples, and your choice should be reflective of how different factors interact with one another to create a set of consumption preferences.
For instance, though you may be targeting a group of intellectuals that have a penchant for nuanced detail, these intellectuals may be executives who only have enough bandwidth for top-level information, or have a chief interest in conversations surrounding industry trade developments. So while on its face, this user profile may portend to a preference for written content, the reality is that this type of user will benefit from a content type that is more digestible—such as videos and podcasts.
The second method involves taking an inventory of what is possible for you at the current moment. Wanting to do video content is nice, but if you do not have the equipment or operators necessary to shoot and edit a video, then it is just another unactionable pipe dream. The same thing goes with intended posting frequency. While it may be nice to post every day, if doing that comes at the expense of properly managing your core business functions, then posting every day is by definition, unsustainable. The point of this is identifying the things that you are and are not capable of—or sometimes even unwilling to do—to identify what is actually possible in light of what you know is desired by your audience.
In identifying what your customers like to consume and what type of content you can create, it is in this cross space where the content you should be producing resides. That content may shake out to be written content, or even podcasts and videos—but whatever that content may be for your brand, the point is that this preferred content is the basis of your brand.
It is after establishing an understanding of what should be produced, that we can introduce technical specifications to give our idea structure. These specifications can cover anything from word length to run time, just as much as they can cover things like color palette, shot composition, image resolution, naming conventions, mixing and mastering standards, or anything else that helps realize the concept through structure. The point of developing technical specifications is not only to identify the needs and wants of your audience. It also exists to provide your content ideas with a sufficient level of structure to ensure that the content you want to make is produced in a way that is scientifically predictable.
Finally, it should also be noted that you can have multiple creative specs for your content product—be they for different types of media, or different use cases within the same type of media. In situations where a content channel is utilized for multiple types of media, multiple specs can be created to correspond with each media type. This means you can have independent creative specs for video content, written content, photo content, or podcast content, and maintain these specifications entirely based on what your content product needs. Alternatively, you can have a single media type, such as video or writing, and have multiple creative specs within that media type. An example of this is how both long and short-form structures can take on vastly different forms in both written and video content. For example, consider the difference between a feature article, and a column. Or, consider the difference between a TV special, vs a TV show, vs. a News Blurb. The point is that establishing a creative spec isn’t going to put you in any creative holes that you can’t get out of. It is there to ensure that ideas get made and that your idea maintains its character over the course of multiple iterations.
Selecting Your Channels
After we have taken the time to define the shape and ultimate needs of our content, our next step is to identify the channels that are available for us to distribute our preferred content type. While this can naturally lead to some quick deductions about what channels to select, sometimes this is not very clear. Though content types such as videos and pictures lend themselves to platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, a medley of written, video and photo content may work for blogs. Usually, the rule of thumb is simple: If you are working within a very specific media type, then work on a specific social media platform—but if you are working on a medley of media types, then your primary channel is the one you own: your website.
For example, if you are a photographer that is starting their own content product, then focusing on Instagram will correspond to the greatest use of your content creation time. If you are a business that is trying to launch a branded video series, then obviously, YouTube or TikTok are better options. But if you want a combination of these things, then the centrality of a blog-style apparatus will serve as a strong primary focal point for your content product.
Also, I should add that it is better to focus on the things that your content product needs, than the things you may superficially want based on what some guy in an online article—or YouTtube video—told you was necessary for successful content marketing. The reason why I am emphasizing a needs-based approach to your channel selection is that it contextualizes channel selection to the reality of what your content brand is creating. It also avoids the mistake of picking content channels without any idea of how you will use them, only to now need to develop an approach for how that channel will serve your business functions. Depending on the business you are running, this may be a space that you can readily grow into—or, a very tall order to fulfill. Emphasizing a needs-based approach to your channel selection allows you to focus on the exact number of areas that are necessary for your marketing success. Ultimately, this approach is designed to facilitate a content creation experience that is deliberate, lean, and easy to manage—since you are only managing everything you need and nothing that you don’t.
Finally, I should add that if you are selecting a media type that is able to be covered by multiple channels, then focus your attention on one or two of these channels—and pick these channels based on the audience you are targeting. So, while a video can be used on at least 4 of the most popular social media networks on the internet, which network gets chosen should be based on where the target audience is the most concentrated. So if you are publishing short-form video content, while you can certainly pick Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, or Instagram as viable options, which one you pick is entirely based on the target demographic you are trying to reach. Want to reach baby boomers? Facebook and YouTube. Want to reach Millennials? YouTube and Instagram. Want to reach Gen Z? TikTok and Snapchat. Wanna reach weirdos? You probably need to be on Reddit.
Journey Mapping Your Content
For those that do not know, the term “customer journey” is used to describe the sequential brand interaction touchpoints that help qualified leads make a buying decision, and keep them engaged once they are converted customers. The reason why journey mapping matters, is that instead of treating marketing solely as a tool for generating qualified leads, it treats marketing as a lifecycle-dependent process that generates new, qualified leads while cross-selling new products to pre-existing customers that have sustained brand engagement.
As I am sure you suspect, when content interacts with the customer journey, there are plenty of areas that it can occupy. All the same, different media types may be better for different phases of the journey itself—and this is entirely dependent on the product at hand. For things like business to business, and professional services, longer-form content can be good in the discovery phase of the customer journey for showcasing expertise, but this approach would not work well for things like consumer products—which calls for faster ways of information delivery, such as images and short videos. At the same time, this media would be insufficient content after the purchase of the consumer product, when people would probably be better served with a longer form video on how the product is used—or an article previewing new third-party accessories for the product.
That being said, don’t let these different configurations confuse you. Despite all of the different ways that content can be mapped to different parts of the customer journey, there is still a hierarchy for which types of content command the best engagement. Irrespective of placement, articles will always outperform ads, photos will always outperform articles, and videos will always outperform photos. Naturally, this means if your business has a command over video production, then video can be positioned in any phase of your customer journey—and still be more effective than text, or images.
The reason why businesses rarely just blanket their customer journey in video content, however, is because the time or cost associated with video production is a self-controlling factor—regardless of what a business may or may not be able to do in-house. So, for most, part of determining where video is best used in the customer journey involves determining where that investment in time and resources is destined to make the most business impact—which explains why many businesses have whiteboards, pitch videos, and video advertising to attract qualified leads, but will not always have a particularly robust content library of videos that are intended for after the buying decision has been made.
And to be clear: though this implementation of video may be limited in its purpose and utility, there is nothing wrong with treating video in this way. Using video primarily in the discovery phase of the customer journey can allow businesses to leverage the power of the medium, while at the same time not have to commit the time or energy to sustained video production efforts—but it all depends on how it is used in the discovery phase.
I think it is important to note that while a content product can be used for brand discovery— advertisements, pitches, and whiteboard videos would not be a part of this particular mix unless they were ads promoting the content product itself. Chiefly because, if content is supposed to provide value as a means of circumventing customer ad resilience, then content that is strictly promotional in nature is not fundamentally content at all—because it doesn’t actually generate informational, educational, or entertainment value. Advertising is a pitch, and exists for no reason other than to encourage a buying decision.
Alternatively, you may find that long-form writing or pictures work well in the post-purchase phase of the customer journey and can be great for starting conversations and creating engagement. The point isn’t that any one approach is absolute, so much as it is that you will need to define where in the customer journey your content product is expected to be relevant. If you want it to be relevant in more than one part, then consider where it can work, and which types of mediums would be most effective in their intended customer journey phases.
Finally, consider how your content will be found in its intended customer journey phase. If it is during the brand discovery or research phases, then SEO will be important. If it is after the buying decision is made, then newsletters will be important. I think the takeaway here is to be present during this phase of the process. Think. Journey Mapping is probably the most strategic component of content strategy that needs to be considered. Well, outside of the production schedule, at least.
Identifying a Production Schedule
If Journey Mapping investigates how your content will be purposed, then identifying a production schedule investigates how your content gets made. My choice of words should be noted as well—as they are very intentional. Production schedules need to be identified—not established, set, or created.
Plenty of people establish, set and create production schedules thinking that this is what they are supposed to do. And while the spirit of this decision is well-informed, the reality is that setting a production schedule does little to actually determine if that production schedule is actionable. For instance, I could set a production schedule for The Lair Blog to be 5 posts a day. I’ve done that before on previous blogging projects, and based on my understanding of previous blogging projects, I know that 5 posts a day is possible for one person.
But these projects were standalone content products that were standalone businesses. I’m talking about magazines and online publications. Thus, the work associated with the business was always associated with creating content.
And that is important to note because that is not the business model for Lair Media. Most crucially, Lair Media is a brand associated with freelance design work. Thus, the brand’s propensity to stay in business entirely hinges upon my ability to successfully attract freelance work. If I do not have freelance work, I’m not keeping the lights on. if I’m not keeping the lights on, then Lair Media goes away.
This means that for as much content as I may want to produce, there are hard and fast limits on how much time I have available to produce content—and those limits are defined by how much of my schedule is occupied by revenue-generating work.
With this in mind, even though I could set a production schedule of 5 posts a day—the truth of the matter is that this posting candor is unsustainable in the long term. Hell, it is most likely unsustainable in the medium and even short-term depending on the amount of work I have on my plate. So ultimately, “setting” a production schedule is not a reasonable approach to creating content in a way that is responsive to my business needs.
This is also why production schedules need to be identified. In the end, the production schedule you and your business will subscribe to is the one that you actually have the time to execute. Looking at this any other way is to look through the lens of ideal theory, pie in the sky, best-case scenario, bullshit. Anybody who does this for a living will tell you that things come up, and they definitely go wrong—no matter how much you plan in advance. Identifying a production schedule means one thing, and one thing only: seeing what you can actually produce in light of the core needs and functions associated with your business.
And you may very well find that after you have identified a production schedule, and started making things—it still needs a level of tweaking. In my case, I originally set my schedule to 3 posts a week, with 2 of them being news-related, and one of them being a longer form piece. For a while, this schedule worked well for me—but once contract work started to pick up, I realized that doing this much writing, along with 50 hours a week of client-facing work was leaving me burnt out. For some time, I played with this schedule, to see how much content-related work I could actually sustain. First, I dropped down to 2 posts per week, then one long-form post per month, then one post per week, and now it is set to one post every 1-2 weeks. No, it isn’t a perfect production timeline, and based on the shifting production windows, there is still some room to tweak this model. But the point is that I am adjusting my production output for content depending on where my core business needs reside.
You should do the same, and with the understanding that this process can take months for you to realize what works and what doesn’t. Furthermore, you really shouldn’t be taking into consideration other mediums—or channels—without getting a content type perfected in how you are delivering it. For instance, there is no point in adding video content to your editorial mix if you are struggling to consistently produce your pictures. There is no point in doing blog posts if you can’t sit down and do a 30-minute podcast. Or if you’re really feeling fancy, there’s no point in doing an app experience, if you are struggling to do videos. Keep in mind that despite what you choose to produce first, second, or third, the point I am trying to make is that your focus surrounding content should be how to execute your most scalable content well—instead of having many different content types.
Of course, be aware that the preliminary phase of this process is really about comparing what you have going on to what you think you can do—and setting realistic standards accordingly. Though there are a few more steps before you get a chance to start creating content and test your production schedule in real-time, the most important next step is most crucially setting a brand.
Conclusion
Now, to be clear, I am well aware that IF you have successfully made it to the bottom of the article, you may be thinking to yourself that all I have done over the course of some 8000 words between two posts, is make this sound like a lot of work. At this point, you may be wondering if you have time to address all of these steps, and may even be questioning if you should bother getting into content at all. While it is not my intention to completely discourage you from getting into content creation, I think it is important to appreciate the true nature of content as a business undertaking. It isn’t something you can just do on the side. If you plan on having it work for you—or better yet, plan on using it as a broader component in your product offering—then yeah, this shit is going to be characterized by differing degrees of challenge, and myriad preliminary details.
But at a certain point, however, the process of planning content transitions from planning many of the technical and organizational aspects that exist behind the scenes, to the tangible and fundamental aspects of a content product that are customer-facing. In my final installment, part 3, I will discuss having a strong brand to accompany your content, making sure your content is properly backloaded to reduce scheduling demands, and finally, using audience feedback to help inform the future direction of your work.
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