What I learned about the modern content flywheel from my clients

These days I’m in my hometown in Gujarat (when did monthly visits become annual visits!). Yesterday, on the way to my friend's home, I was driving down the same road I used to take as a child (cycle back then) after almost 5 years.?

I felt a sharp pang of nostalgia when I saw so many old houses (think of 70-100-year-old massive mansions) being replaced by swanky new commercial and residential buildings. Not that I remembered every detail of those houses, but they had been fascinating for the younger me who grew up reading Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Sherlock Holmes, and the Victorian classics.?

And then I sighed, change waits for no one.?

That incident inspired this edition of The Content Fizbo ??: There are several parallels between seeing old mansions making space for the new-age needs and the modern content marketing flywheel.?

All those content strategies: creating skyscraper content, focusing solely on a keyword-based strategy to get organic traffic, and publishing 2,500-3,000+ word assets have now been replaced by an audience-centric approach.?

Content marketing as we know is a different ball game altogether now.?

While this change is being noticed now, the modern content strategy started taking shape last year. We saw our clients implement these new trends (in different capacities) much before they became the talk of the town.?

What I learned about the modern content flywheel from my clients

Strategic insights??

#1. Starting your content strategy? Create content that helps the customer-facing teams?

In an early-stage startup, the good thing is that your prospects are more likely to share feedback and their objections regarding the product.?

But the bad thing is that you don’t have the resources that your well-established competitors would have. You typically have a lean team that does pretty much everything.?

That’s where content that helps the customer-facing teams takes precedence over other goals like ranking high on search results.?

So how do you decide what content to create??

Make a list of the FAQs: be it product-related, customer objections, or even broader ones: What problem are you solving, why are you solving it, and how do you plan to solve it?

Create content that answers these questions before going after a broader strategy.?

When you have to do more with fewer resources, create content pieces that the sales/founding team can use during customer calls.?

#2. Prioritize content instead of addressing anything and everything (and burning out)

How do you prioritize which content type to create??

The answer is: the middle and bottom of the funnel content (MoFu and BoFu) before addressing the highly competitive top of the funnel (ToFu) topics that are being dominated by the biggest and more established players in your industry.?

Instead of trying to create all content assets in one go and burning out, here’s a hierarchy worth following:?

Start with sales collateral - since it helps you understand the objections of your prospects and position your product accordingly.?

Next, landing pages - they help the audience get an overview of your product.?

Case studies - If you have a few paying customers or customers trying the MVP, build case studies.

Now the best part here is that you can always have a more detailed case study later. A testimonial, the challenge the product solves and how it helped them - is also a great starting point.?

These are evergreen pieces of content that can be constantly repurposed: snippets of quotes, narrative-based blog pieces, statistics of the impact your product has, and so on.?

In-product content - One thing is to use content to attract new customers. But content also plays an important role in engaging existing customers, and increasing product use.?

Bite-sized tutorials, templates, FAQs, and walkthroughs are low-effort but high-impact assets that encourage users to discover product features instantly.

Solution papers and downloadables - Capture the leads that are interested in your product using downloadables and solution papers.?

Downloadables = calculators, guides, online quizzes, webinars, and whitepapers.?

If you have a lean marketing team, you can focus on these assets and you’ll still be in a great position.?

Product how-to’s - These posts show the audience how to do a task using your tool. The multi-fold benefits of this type of content are:?

• Shows you’re an expert in doing the job?
• Teaches the audience to use your product/get familiar with it?
• Reduces support escalations?

Once you have a content team, the additional assets you can create are = thought leadership posts, educational content and blogs, listicles, and so on.?

Content outsourcing insights?

#3. Build an outsourcing resource center on product education

There are a rare few companies that keep their content creation entirely in-house. Most rely on a combination of in-house and outsourced resources to create different formats of content targeting the purchase journey.?

Especially when you have a nice product/service, your marketing team needs to train the external writers on the product and the industry.?

When we started working with Docsumo last year, I remember all those calls with their content marketing manager Pankaj Tripathi - who walked us through the product, explained the technicalities of document processing, and how and when the use them correctly -? until we reached a level where he only needed to run a final check before publishing.?

When you are working with an external agency/writer, support them with the necessary product details, walkthroughs, case studies, and product insights.

If you expect the writer to be an expert in your tool: you will most likely be disappointed.?

Pro tip - Have a folder with all the above details + onboarding processes. This way every time a new writer joins, you can set them up for success quickly: they can refer to the content library and reach out to you if further clarification is needed.?

Every time we start creating content for clients in a new industry, I’m reminded of this post from 2020:?

#4. Back your content assets with a unique perspective?

Where most marketing teams go wrong is: leaving this to the writer.?

The truth is, when you are working with a content partner, guide them on a unique perspective or point of view (POV) they should add to each content asset. That’s because the marketing team is best placed to position the product; naturally with insights from the C-suite, sales, product, and support teams.?

The writer can then build on this narrative and create a strong and persuasive piece of content.?

How to find unique perspectives??

• I’ll tell you how one of our clients does it: they ask the writer to first create a piece of content. Then, talk to the SMEs (internal product experts and other departments) - to find out and integrate first-hand knowledge that sets that piece apart from the other articles that merely regurgitate what’s already available on Google.?
• Another client gives us reference articles ( HBR, McKinsey, Deloitte, BCG, and its likes) and highlights an aspect that could be used in their context.?

The level of insights they share (to bring a unique POV) are in the screenshots below:?

You can also source the “what sets this piece apart from competitors” from your product teams and customer-facing teams.?

#5. Bad things can happen to those who publish AI generated content?

I was talking to my marketer friend last week: she is a marketing manager at a SaaS company.?

They started publishing AI generated content around March this year and 4 months down the road their organic traffic plunged significantly. She attributes this to Google’s core algorithm update (however not sure if it’s widespread).?

They removed all the AI-generated posts but also lost traffic in the process.?

I’m guessing the declining traffic could be - because other companies are also using AI content to rank for the same topics. The audience would’ve naturally figured out bot-like posts from miles away and bounced to other sites.?

Sooner or later AI generated content published without any additional insights would get pushed lower in the search results.?

But these same folks have witnessed marketing budgets getting slashed as well.?

This has led us to believe that:?

• AI is useful for research?
• But Google has still not made up its mind regarding how to treat AI content = grey waters?
• Marketers still need a lot of work to take AI content to the publishing level?

??Risks of using purely AI generated content?

1. Factual inaccuracies?
2. Reputational risk?
3. Inconsistent tone?
4. Boring?

?? Human-crafted AI content is a safe option?

1. At a fraction of the cost of human writers?
2. Consistent quality?
3. Manual fact-check
4. Cohesive brand tone?

Enter our hybrid solution: 
Human-crafted AI content = Leveraging AI without its disadvantages??        

How do we plan to do this??

#1. Firstly, you can outsource bite-sized content from the AI generated copy - we’ll add expert insights, a compelling argument, case studies and actionable examples and expert insights to your piece.?

#2. Secondly, we incorporate editors to strategically convert bland pieces into high-quality assets that have a compelling narrative.?

If you’re already publishing AI generated content at scale but wasting too much time editing it or improving it, let’s talk. For the first 10 customers, we’re giving a 20% off.?

In a nutshell, brands are taking an audience-first approach to their content marketing.?

It starts with understanding the audience and their pain points and addressing them through your content.?

Work with external content partners instead of burning your marketing and content teams and make it a collaborative activity.?

Lastly, don’t risk publishing AI generated content.?

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We’ve launched iScribblers managed content marketplace: a self-serve platform for companies looking to outsource their content.?

Link to the platform - https://business.iscribblers.com/?

If you’re tired of negotiating with freelancers and agencies and getting ghosted by them: sign up here and share your content requirements: We’ll start working on them instantly.?

It’s an MVP - so we’d love to hear your feedback and bugs.?

On a side note, do try iScribblers AI - https://ai.iscribblers.com/ to create short-form copies.?

We’re working on making prompts better.?

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I’ve been following Joe Michalowski for more than a year now (since we started working with another business planning platform) and love his insights regarding running lean content teams.?

He’s recently launched a podcast where he talks about his learnings from heading content at Mosaic.tech and the two published episodes are awesome. If you’re a content person (marketer/writer/manager) - I’d recommend listening to them here:?

https://marketersindemand.com/contenthead/?

PS: Content Fizbo will be published from London next week.?