As you start thinking about marketing strategies for the New Year, it’s important to remember that the shift towards the unique, quality content that picked up speed in 2012 is most certainly not over. But, with the New Year comes new opportunities for you to reexamine your strategies and realign them with your budget–big or small. And luckily, creating high quality content doesn’t always have to come with a high price tag; we’re here to prove it. Here are a few tips on how your business can create quality content, even without a big budget.
Make a Plan
Whether you’re assembling an Ikea couch or planning your marketing strategy, it’s always important to start with a plan. To do that you need to make sure you understand your brand. It may seem obvious, but trust us, putting your company’s values, your brand identity, and your goals, all on paper will help. Just as important: understand your audience. Keep your reader in mind with every decision you make throughout this process: it’s essential. They’re the ones you’re trying to reach, engage, and impress.
Begin with a Successful Brainstorm
Two heads are usually better than one, but this doesn’t mean that an enormous team is the answer to brainstorming quality ideas. Sometimes, surprisingly enough, having too many people with too many differing opinions just creates confusion amongst the group and a discord in, or dilution of, what could have been good ideas. You don’t need a huge team, or a huge budget, to have a productive brainstorming session. Create the perfect idea-inducing environment by having a team of no more than 10 people, some with designated jobs like idea recorder or team leader. Make sure you encourage breaks every 1-2 hours for a snack or fresh air to clear their minds. And don’t always write down the first thing that’s said—if left alone, people will most likely bat an idea about until it’s slightly more full formed, so just have patience.
Follow Through
Don’t let good ideas go to die because of poor planning or a lack of creative follow through. Without a concrete structure, unfortunately, ideas mean very little. There comes a time when creating quality content comes down to simply putting pen to paper, so to speak, and ensuring that these great ideas are made reality with the aid of a reliable content writer and a structured plan of action.
Get Your Content Out There
Whether it’s a blog post, a guest post, a document, a press release, a new page on your site—great content needs to get read for it to really live up to its full potential as a marketing technique. It boils down to the fact that, if you’re creating well-written, unique content, you want people to pay attention. Working to create content that evokes emotion, invites readers in, has a captivating headline, and is optimized and SEO friendly are all tactics that can help your content market itself.