So why would you start your digital marketing activity without all the content that you need?

One of the biggest challenges business owners and marketers have, and that constantly delivers doom & despondency around digital marketing, is a lack of content.

“We don’t know what to say, nothing really happens here. Let’s just stick something on there and see what happens…”. And so something ‘seat of the pants’-style gets put out only to deliver disappointing and disillusioned results, with the inevitable conclusion of ‘marketing just doesn’t work’.

I mean, I’m not saying that you need to have a library of content that lasts you years (although if you have what’s known as ‘evergreen’ content that has worked well in the past & remains relevant, then it can be used for much longer), but just like having all the ingredients you need to cook tea, you need to have content ingredients, upfront and ready, to be put into action.

But why I hear you ask? It takes so long to pull a list of content together and I just don’t have time!

Here are a few reasons…

1. by having your library of content ready, it saves you procrastinating and not actually doing your posts because you don’t know what to write about. Get organised, collate a ‘pool’ of content to be able to dip into & the job is so much quicker & less painful.
2. with your content library to hand you can allocate time to plan your posts, scheduling if needs be, which in turn actually gives you more time back to do other things in the business. It creates efficiency and organisation, in terms of content at our fingertips and in one place, and we all know the benefits of planning in business, right…? It also allows you to plan in time you need to create any graphics, templates or video material. With a template you can drop in your imagery / video / narrative quickly & easily & your posts remain ‘on brand’, plus blocking out time for video recordings means they’re not rushed or disjointed.
3. it gives your content variety. When you are posting ad-hoc & off the cuff you’ll probably end up posting the same kind of thing because it’s easy, to hand, & maybe what you’re comfortable with. Your audience, however, likes variety, just like we don’t like eating the same thing every night for tea, and not just of post content but also media style. Switching it up will also allow appeal to different viewers and audiences.
4. it allows you to be consistent. Unless you’ve had your head in the sand, you’ll know that there are 2 ‘audiences’ at least that we are communicating with. One is your target audience who will buy from you & one is the dreaded algorithm; that mystical entity that seems to change at least once a week, only works if you’re throwing a load of money at it and can deal you the ‘go to jail, go directly to jail’ card without warning. By being consistent you’re playing the algorithm game, which in turn will allow your audience to see more of what you post & potentially reach a wider range of audiences.
5. it allows you to be able to identify how much content you need to post at the frequency you want to, consistently. Having 10 pieces of content is great. However, if you’re posting 3 times a week, consistently, those 10 pieces are not going to last you long; and then what happens? If you can spend a few hours pulling together content under a number of headings, giving yourself say 10 pieces per heading, even if the narrative isn’t written there & then, you could have a good 4 or 5 months worth of content. Then by ensuring your content collation folder stays ‘live’ you can add to it as you go along, perhaps with news stories, developments, new products, offers, etc. reviewing it every week to ensure you keep on top of it.

I mean I could go on, but hopefully you get why a library of content for your marketing is not only an advantage but also key to the success of the digital marketing activity you’re investing your time, effort and money into.

Just like you don’t want to be turning the hob or oven off & going back down to the shops to get the next ingredient I hadn’t thought of meaning tea takes 2 hours to cook instead of 30 minutes, don’t spend time sitting frustrated and starting to panic because you can’t think of the next ‘thing’ to feed the social media pack with or end up posing once in a while when you get an idea and have time to execute it.

If you want some help in getting your content library started, give me a shout.