5 Ways to Get Your Team Excited About Content Creation

• Updated on: 2017-05-15
• Read original article here

Content marketing has become a well-established centerpiece of digital marketing—its benefits widely understood, its processes widely practiced. If anything, some of the shininess has worn off; content marketing has become legitat the expense of its novelty, which means that some companies have developed content burnout. Maybe that’s true of your business: You and all of your team members know that it’s important to develop good content, but you have a hard time summoning much enthusiasm for it.

That can be a problem, but not an insurmountable one. There are things you can do to build content excitementinto the culture of your company. Here are five ways you can start doing so today.

Content creation needs to have a stated purpose. Creating content for content’s sake can get old really quick. Creating content to tell a specific story to a specific audience—with specific goals in mind—can be a lot easier for your team to rally behind. Get everyone together to brainstorm the values and virtues that your brand stands for—the points you want to emphasize in your content marketing. Give your team members not only a clear understanding of your central narrative, but even some input in shaping that narrative.

Not everyone on your team is good at writing. That’s pretty much true of any business. But everyone at your company has ideas, and a point of view. Make sure the people tasked with writing blog posts and other online content get feedback from everyone; rounding up the office and asking for specific topics to write about or questions to address can help everyone feel involved.

Again, it’s not wise to force everyone to be a writer – but that doesn’t mean you can’t tap into somecontent-related gift that each team member has, whether that’s shooting videos, taking Instagram pics or simply flagging down interesting articles that are worth sharing. See if you can find a specific, defined role that each team member can play in your content initiatives.

One of the fun things about content creation is that it gives plenty of room for out-of-the-box thinking. Encouraging that mindset can make the whole enterprise more interesting to your team members. Give them free reign to make wonky YouTube videos, use funny filters or effects on Snapchat, or write blog posts in unorthodox structures or formats. This does notmean you shouldn’t have the proper editing and quality control steps in place—but allow people to indulge their curiosity where it leads them.

Another way to enliven your content creation efforts is to open the gates and let your clients in on the process – asking them to share brand-related Instagram pictures, for instance, or to tweet their comments, questions or ideas to you. When your team members see this kind of participation, it can bolster their own enthusiasm for content creation.

Those are just a few ideas to get team members engaged in the content process. Your mileage may vary, but hopefully, you’ll find something you can do to make your content process exciting – and inclusive – all over again.