Sense of content urgency

Sometimes you have to look to the past to find the answer for the future. To excel in the digital content game, you sort of publish your own daily newspaper or weekly magazine. Brands become their own publishers. In the next pages, you will learn and understand…

• Why your brand needs to think like an old school publisher to prepare for the content future without a Facebook or Instagram. Improve the effectiveness of your content with your audience at the core. Become agile and nimble. And to speed up whilst you gain efficiency in production and media budgets. 
• What are the basics and fundamentals you need before you even consider participating in the content game? Spoil alert, your ’why’ and your brand strategy are the backbone. Measure your content efforts in line with your business objectives. And please do create a brand persona for consistency and speeding up the production process.
• How to set up the content structure to merge content from all silos like Marketing, Sales, Corp Comms, PR, HR, and Customer Care. You will gain efficiency in your production budget. Use free Google data for insights on your customer needs. And why ‘help’ content is mostly overlooked, the least sexy and your most important plus effective content investment.
• Setting up a central content team, including the JDs. Keep your stakeholders on board. How to tackle brand safety and be prepared for the crisis when the sh*t hits the fan. 
• Last not least, what are the processes and tools to have in place to speed up the team and shorten timelines?

Time to make a change

Shift from ad hoc performance campaigning to continuous brand storytelling. Use the ‘softer’ content to fill the top of the funnel. Create an overview of what is published, when, where and with what media spend. Decrease your dependency on social for reach. Integrate all digital channels for consistency. It is a bit like publishing your own daily digital magazine.

My aim is to give you insights on why you should embrace this change, how this is done and what you need. With the science in these pages, the art is in your own adjustments and implementation.

Stay curious and dare to be bold.

Don’t BS.

Just do it. Don’t say you want to build your content base, build it. Lots of my clients are saying they want to make the change, yet in reality, they are driven by the sales numbers and activation campaigns. Brand building with content takes time and investment. In the long term, it pays off. Very clear with your ‘help’ content used to tell your brand story. It also generates more and hotter leads that are easier to convert to sales.

4 Elements you need for content 

Some of the concepts in this book are new, some are familiar. Each is different in length, depth and amount of operational details to explain the concept. In a nutshell

• It’s a belief: First things first. The belief and the support from the C-suite are non-negotiable.
• Element 1: Basics and Fundamentals. What do you need before you can even think about content?
• Element 2: Structure. How to bring structure to your content and use data to make decisions.
• Element 3: Organization and Content Team. Why and how to set up a central content team. From the roles, organizational structure to stakeholder management.
• Element 4: Tools and processes. What you need to speed up. Added bonus: how to improve your brief to the agencies. ‘Sh*t in is sh*t out’ and having great content starts with yourself.

These pages apply to all industries, brands, and organizations. From international corporates to smaller brands, start-ups or even independent consultants and artists. With a focus on digital channels as that is my area of expertise and experience.

My experience and 20+ books

Bringing together my experience, my knowledge with the best books on content, I aim to give you a vision for the content future. I create the overview, you do the deep-dive in the sources to learn more about all the details.

Interviews

With huge pleasure, I got the opportunity to interview the most amazing peers in the content industry. From the top international agencies to the most inspiring brands. Their insights absolutely blew my mind. Incorporating these was a challenge and I hope to have done justify to all the great minds that shared their experiences and knowledge.

Books and sources

Sometimes I do a shameless copy-paste, not reinventing what is already written with excellence. Other times I adjusted and combined for the readability and tone of voice. Always giving the credits and linking to the original sources. See the overview of all references and credits at the end of the book. With my shout out for their excellent work, amazing knowledge, insights and how to’s. Crediting their leadership within their industry.