There’s no denying that content is king. It’s a critical tool for building trust among clients and prospects and among the keys to getting found online. Unfortunately, creating compelling, high quality content is a time-intensive process. Here are four time-saving tips to lessen the content creation burden:
Keep your radar up
What makes content compelling? A strong hook. When going through the workday, keep an eye out for articles and emails that may be helpful for crafting blog posts, white papers and presentations in the future. Create a system for storing this content for future use. This will give you an arsenal of relevant third party content to supplement your own thoughts.
Build a go-to list
Which associations, publications and key figures have an impeccable reputation within your industry? Who can you consistently rely on for the latest data and breaking news? These are your go-to sources. Whether you follow these individuals and organizations on Twitter or connect/follow via LinkedIn, keep an eye on these assets. When you are facing a tight deadline and need information, turn to these individuals.
Google Alerts
News on relevant topics and keywords delivered to your Inbox each day. What more could you ask for? Setup alerts for your organization, key staff, company critics, competitors and relevant topics. While it’s critical to read any piece of content in its entirety before sharing, having a few to choose from sitting right in your Inbox can save a significant amount of time.
Repurpose existing content
While you don’t want your constituents to tune out your Twitter feed because it’s identical to your Facebook page, there are easy ways to repurpose existing content without diluting the value. If you invest time in researching, drafting and designing a whitepaper on the ten most common IT security oversights, that’s potentially 10 tweetable factoids and fodder for a couple of complementary blog posts. It’s also great data for the IT firm to share when pitching prospective clients.
When evaluating your marketing communications and social media marketing strategies, identify opportunities to repurpose content and know what sources you can rely on to provide third party information to support your plan. Developing an efficient and effective system for creating and curating content not only allows organizations to produce a higher volume of quality content but to diversify their marketing activities without exhausting limited resources.
