Go ahead… Dream Big!
Having a lot of great content ideas is exciting, don’t you think? It means you and your team are in high gear and overflowing with creativity. Oh, the possibilities!
Then logistics come to mind. Do you have the bandwidth and budget to complete a white paper with blog posts in an effective timeframe? If your enthusiasm starts to wane at this point, you are not alone. It’s a common challenge faced by marketing teams, especially successful ones.
My clients tell me that the most common causes of this conundrum are:
- Staff time constraints
- A tight budget
- New items that suddenly pop up
- The need for special writing expertise
The good news is that there are creative ways to overcome these challenges and get that content produced. Here are three strategies that I’ve seen work wonders:
- Form an in-house collaborative team. The team includes marketing, technical staff, and perhaps others so that all aspects of the content are represented. The content development is then divided among team members according to their expertise. This approach precludes a single person being saddled with a lot of extra work, and also enables a faster turnaround.
More gain with less pain!
- Draw from existing content. Available, sufficiently in-depth content is a treasure trove for creating associated pieces with less effort and budget than starting from scratch. For example, mine a white paper to create articles, blog posts, social content, and more. The opposite approach also works, e.g., gather existing articles, technical notes, blog posts, etc., to create a comprehensive e-book on the topic.
Content repurposing par excellence!
- Engage a professional writer. Outside resources such as freelance writers can help bridge the gap between content needs and in-house resources. This approach may at first seem budget-unfriendly, but a writer’s fee is usually more-than-covered by a single new scientific sale or client. Double kudos to you for finding a writer who is also a scientist! This option works well in tandem with the first two strategies.
Triple kudos!
So you see, it’s okay to DREAM BIG content dreams, because there are creative ways to get it done.