Content is king, but creating quality content is not easy. It requires a clear strategy, a creative mindset, and a collaborative team. How do you empower your team to produce better content that engages your audience and supports your goals? Here are some tips to help you build a content powerhouse.
Before you start creating content, you need to have a clear vision of what you want to achieve, who you want to reach, and how you want to measure your success. Your content vision should align with your overall digital strategy and reflect your brand identity and values. Communicate your content vision to your team and make sure everyone understands the purpose, the objectives, and the expectations of your content.
When #Unilever embarks on content creation for #ecommerce, it's not just about pushing products. Their content vision is holistically crafted: it encompasses brand stories, consumer insights, and global trends. They begin with a deep understanding of their target audience, aligning with their preferences, habits, and values. For instance, Unilever's Dove 'Real Beauty' campaign went beyond selling skincare products—it aimed to challenge beauty stereotypes. To empower your e-commerce team like Unilever, it's essential to have a clear content vision. Dive deep into consumer behavior, align with brand values, and always keep the bigger narrative in mind. Your content then becomes more than just a sales pitch—it becomes a conversation.
Your content strategy should serve to help your business achieve its ultimate goal (typically to increase revenues or profits) by addressing what customers care to learn from you. It might not do that immediately or directly, but you should be able to tie your content strategy to that ultimate in X many steps. For example, your widget helps people eat healthier. Your content should help answer customers n questions around your product. The more comfortable you can make your customers feel about your product, the more products will be sold, thus increasing revenues. Your content doesn’t need to be just self-produced, it could include collaborations with other brands and influencers. The main point is to build for what the customers want.
Apart from understanding who your target audience is and how best to engage with them. Providing clear guidelines to ensure your team understands the brand voice and messaging. Through tone, style, and formatting to maintain consistency in content output. Encourage collaboration with your team to work together and share ideas. Invest in training and development opportunities for your team to improve their skills and stay up-to-date with industry trends.
Once you have your content vision, you need to translate it into specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). These will help you track your progress, evaluate your results, and identify areas for improvement. Your goals and KPIs should be relevant to your audience, your industry, and your stage of the customer journey. For example, you might want to increase your website traffic, generate more leads, or boost your conversions.
A content calendar is a tool that helps you plan, organize, and schedule your content across different channels and platforms. It helps you align your content with your goals, your audience, and your events. A content workflow is a process that defines the roles, responsibilities, and deadlines of your team members for each content project. It helps you streamline your content production, ensure quality and consistency, and avoid bottlenecks and delays.
Feedback and training are essential to empower your team to produce better content. Feedback helps you recognize your team's strengths, address their weaknesses, and improve their performance. Training helps you develop your team's skills, knowledge, and confidence. You should provide feedback and training regularly, constructively, and specifically. You should also encourage your team to give feedback to each other and to seek feedback from your audience.
Creativity and collaboration are the key ingredients of great content. You should foster a culture that encourages your team to experiment, innovate, and learn from their mistakes. You should also foster a culture that promotes teamwork, communication, and trust. You can use tools and techniques such as brainstorming, co-creation, peer review, and content audits to stimulate creativity and collaboration among your team members.
Finally, you should celebrate your achievements and learn from your failures. Celebrating your achievements helps you motivate your team, appreciate their efforts, and reward their results. Learning from your failures helps you identify your challenges, overcome your obstacles, and optimize your strategies. You should celebrate and learn together as a team and share your insights and best practices with your peers and stakeholders.