The Importance of Building a Culture of Content at Your Company [Infographic]

Did you know 65% of content created is either hard to find, poorly conceived, or unappealing to its target audience?

But, why?

Unfortunately, many companies and people simply create content for the sake of creating content -- to say they’re blogging or that they’re active on social media.

As you can tell by looking through any spammy newsfeed, it seems like most content created today tends to be irrelevant and not targeted to a specific audience.That may be because according to Joe Pulizzi, about 70% of marketers lack a consistent or integrated content strategy.

In order to create a more powerful content marketing strategy, you first must create a culture of content -- an environment where everyone knows its value and has completely bought into it; an organization where everyone contributes in some way or another.

For most companies, according to the infographic below, content is traditionally the responsibility of an agency or consultant, corporate marketing, PR/communications, or subject matter experts. Those are all great options, but the people who know your product or service the best is your employees, which is why creating a culture of content creation is so important.

How to Implement a Culture of Content

1. Get Buy in From Everyone

In order for a culture of content to work and help your company increase traffic and leads, there needs to be buy in from everyone. It shouldn’t just be the marketing team’s objective to “generate X amount of visitors each month,” but, an objective for everyone in the company.

Getting everyone excited about “blogging” can be a challenge, but it is possible. Two big advocates of this are Marcus Sheridan and Ann Handley.

If you’ve ever listened to Marcus you’ve probably heard the follow, “Nobody cares about ‘blogging.’ Everyone wants to be a better teacher.”

When you’re trying to get buy in from your organization, the conversation shouldn’t be about everyone blogging, but rather using blogging as a tool to teach and communication with your audience.

Plus, don’t forget to celebrate the results that are driven by everyone creating content!

Team members love to know when an article they wrote generated 8,000 leads or that it’s the most viewed blog post of the month. It gives them incentive to keep writing!

2. Build an Organization of Teachers

Do your employees want to be considered thought leaders?

If so, the best way is for them to start publishing relevant content that’s engaging and triggers your readers to do something.

DemandGen established that 51% of B2B buyers rely on content to research and make buying decisions. They also want shorter, interactive content that educates rather than sells, and, 47% of buyers view three to five pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep.

By creating high-quality content that meets your audience’s needs, you’ll find that your sales cycle will become a fraction of the length it used to be.

Over 70% of buying decisions are made prior to ever contacting a company or filling out a form on their website.

3. You Don’t Need to Be the Best Writer to Create Content

No matter your position, everyone in the company can and should be creating valuable content.

For those of you that are hesitant to start writing, simply because you see yourself as a “bad” writer, Ann Handley says, “Just barf up what you want to say and then reshape it into something that benefits your reader.”

In other words, write your ideas down and then edit the content with your target audience in mind. Getting something down on paper (or screen) is the first step.

Also, to ensure your content doesn’t have grammatical errors and you’re effectively targeting your audience, consider having a single person such as a content manager spearhead the effort.

4. Create a Collaborative and Supportive Writing Environment

Content creation shouldn’t feel like a burden, and unfortunately, one reason many individuals struggle with creating content is a lack of time.

To ensure that your culture of content is long-lasting and doesn’t die out in a month, it’s important to explain the benefits of having everyone publish content.

Some of those benefits consist of them being seen as a thought leader in their industry which in turn can build credibility for your leads and customers.

Marcus Sheridan has a great article where he talks about ways to generate content from employees. It breaks employees down into the following categories:

• The Writers: Those employees you can give topics and have create the content by a deadline. Once that content is created, you can hand it off to a content editor to clean up the post and ensure that the article flows.
• The Actors (AKA Sales): Due to their busy schedules the best way to gather the knowledge of these employees is through a video interview. Don’t just stick your sales person in front of camera and have them talk. The best approach is to have one person asking the questions and your sales person answering them. Another method, would be for your sales team to create a detailed outline of their thoughts and have a writer or your content manager turn the thoughts on the paper into an article.
• The “Questioners”: If you do come across individuals who struggle with writing and creating video content, you can involve them in the process by having them help brainstorm ideas and topics for content that should be created for the company.

Still not sure if a culture of content marketing is the secret your team needs, check out the infographic below from Bloomfire.