After the amazing success of Content Marketing World last week, with over 600 people in attendance, I wonder if some marketers are heading back to their desks full of new ideas and energized to take their content marketing programs to a whole new level...but are still stymied by the content creation itself. As a freelance copywriter, I have run into this situation with clients years before content marketing ever became a term, let alone a mainstream one. It would usually come up in conversation when I was encouraging clients to consider using e-newsletters for marketing. "But what would we write about?" I was repeatedly asked.
Then when blogging as marketing tools became an effective SEO strategy (remember, this is before we were talking about content marketing), I was repeatedly asked the same question: "But what would we write about?"
Marketers had an easy time figuring out what they would say in a brochure or on a website. No problem creating content for those marketing pieces! Those would be produced once then maybe modified later. With the e-newsletters and blogging, I was suggesting they commit to creating content--new content, mind you--over and over and over again. Even when they knew they could use We Know Words to supply the copywriting and content, they would be fearful of running out of ideas, and fearful of their own in-house ability to write.
Well, the obvious answer to the first fear is to outsource content creation. :-)
But the answer to the second fear is just as easy. And this is when I'm going to tell you how to make content creation a piece of cake. Seriously. In fact, it will be easier than baking a cake. Ready?
Tell stories.
That is it. That is all I am suggesting you do. Tell stories.
When you go to a cocktail party, a networking event or a family gathering, people talk, right? And a lot of times, that talking is story telling. Stories about pets or kids or bosses or clients or vacations of the mechanic who tried to cheat you or the hairdresser who got your color just right...stories, stories, stories.
Do you have to sit around tapping your pencil on your desktop struggling to determine what you'll talk about when you get to that party, event or gathering? Of course not! You're just talking and telling stories and entertaining.
So tackle your content marketing the same way. It's a creative content marketing approach that will require only the effort of typing and spell checking. Tell a story about a new client, an old client, a favorite client, a troublesome client (and maybe make that one anonymous). Talk about how your business started or why. Tell a story about an employee or a company tradition or picnic. Talk about the industry, maybe how it used to be or what you see now.
If you were talking to me right now at a networking event, both of us holding a glass of wine and getting to know each other's businesses, what would we talk about? What stories would you tell me, the freelance copywriter, about your business so I'd know it better?
Write those stories down. Don't worry about anything else except the story. Now spell check them. Now put them in blog posts and/or newsletter articles. Plug in your keywords as needed. Then publish these stories and share them via your social networks.
Now do it again. You, me, glasses of wine, you're talking and telling me stories...
There. Content creation without the agony, without wondering what you'll talk about.
Finessing your content marketing strategy can come later. For now, I only suggest you get the content creation part down.
Does it sound too simple? It's easier than baking a cake!
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