How to maximize your company’s creative content potential

Firstly, don’t be worried that you’ve landed on yet another blog talking about how Millennials are taking over the workforce with their tech-savvy ways, blah blah, blah. This blog is going to take a realistic, up-to-date look at strategies and tactics that companies can use to maximize their creative content potential. 

Regardless of the demographics in your business, technology is now completely integrated into every element of your operations. And the people who are making it aren’t necessarily the tech wizards of a decade or so ago. In fact, Gartner predicts that “by 2024, 80% of technology products and services will be built by those who are not technology professionals.”

So, what does this mean for brands and their employees? It means adopting a new, DIY mindset and a different way of working. 

Your company is likely already brimming with natural content creators 

A decade or so ago, the average marketing department would fend off any attempts from colleagues without specific training or knowledge to post on social media. If someone with zero history of content creation wanted to create a how-to video to answer a customer query they would be greeted with a firm ‘thanks, but no thanks.’ 

Now, the rising majority of workers are digital natives and they have probably been creating content since the first time they boarded the school bus. Things have changed. 

This is great news. It’s great news for brands that want to connect more effectively with their audience, on their terms. It’s great news for marketers who don’t have enough hours in the day. And it’s great news for your customers who want the high-quality, relevant content they need when they want it. 

This blog will explore all the ways that your company can harness these exciting new developments. We’ll look at the best methods for exploring the creative resources of your entire team to maximize your company’s creative content potential. We’ll look at how to get them involved, the right ways to integrate this new approach into your company culture, how to find the right tech to support your strategy, and much more. 

Let’s get started. 

Getting your creative process right

Introducing new processes in the workplace requires some forward planning. Have a think about how you are currently tapping into content creation resources in your company outside of your creative team and the processes and systems you use to support that. Then have a think about where you need to be.

How can you get others involved in a way that would encourage them to give their all? You don’t want them to feel burdened by additional tasks, after all.

The idea is to enhance their role and commitment to the company by offering the opportunity to contribute their unique knowledge and experience to the growth of the business. 

This should lead you pretty naturally on to who to involve if you aren’t there already. Which teams and individuals would be most valuable, for which tasks, and why?

For instance, are there people in your product development team that could provide some thought leadership content around a new release that you want to promote? Or perhaps someone in your customer support department could inject some valuable insights into a video guide.

At Foleon we have had great success with this approach. For example, getting our sales reps to update brochures for target accounts, or asking our customer success managers to help create our annual usage report. 

Gather your key people around you and brainstorm ideas, identify challenges, and workshop solutions until you come up with a process that will work for your company.

Then it’s time to think about integrating the new approach into your company culture. 

How to create a culture of content at your company

You know this is a brilliant idea that will do wonders for your brand presence and customer satisfaction levels. But, in order to make it work, you need to build a culture of content in your company. Here are a few tips to help you get it right. 

Get senior management on board 

We’re not suggesting that all business leaders are solely motivated by money, but it certainly helps to mention the great potential your initiative has for boosting revenue. And don’t forget to mention the opportunities for optimizing customer retention and loyalty, while you’re at it.

Take your senior management team through some of the most noteworthy results from your content marketing campaigns and paint a picture of how you could increase these results by getting more people involved.

They are bound to be worried about how this redistribution of tasks will affect day-to-day operations so make sure you have the answer up your sleeve. 

Sharing is caring 

Changes in workplace culture, including ones that enhance company values, should involve your HR and/or People team. Show them how this will unite your teams and build bonds where there might have been a disconnect previously.

Letting people get involved and promoting creativity can significantly increase commitment and the overall level of happiness in a workplace. It makes people feel like they’re making a difference. Plus, doing something creative can be a welcome break from a person’s normal tasks. 

Offer some workshops 

Workshops can be a great way to test the waters with would-be content creators in your team. Pete in Finance might be a whizz with Instagram for all you know! Offer a range of sessions in blogging, vlogging, and social media, for example. Find out who already has some content creation skills, who needs a little work, and who might require too much extra help or investment right now. 

Even if some people don’t end up being interested, the workshops can help you build awareness of your activities so they don’t feel left in the dark. Plus, a person with a particular business or product knowledge but lacking in content creation skills might wind up being a great candidate for a video interview. Or they might become a willing contributor for research around a ghost-written thought leadership article. Consider using professional video interview software to feature guests in all of your online workshops. 

Show your appreciation 

When people take the time to get involved, make sure you spotlight them. Celebrate your content creators! Show that you appreciate their hard work by sharing it with everyone.

Remember to let the team know when you get great results or feedback from your campaigns, too. This not only gives a well-earned pat on the back to the content creator, but it also serves as a handy reminder to senior management of why you are taking this approach and why it should continue. 

Choose tech that is easy, accessible, and collaborative 

At this point you might be asking yourself, ‘why are we writing about this on the Foleon blog’? Well, democratizing content creation is a topic near and dear to our hearts.

We honestly believe in empowering everyone to create content. And we’ve seen the brilliant results this approach can deliver, for businesses of all shapes and sizes — including ours — and we want to see it work for others. 

We are also writing about maximizing your company’s creative potential because our content creation platform is designed to encourage, improve, and enhance collaboration — so content empowerment really is in our DNA.

When we talk about effective content collaboration we are talking about making it as simple and straightforward as possible for people to work together to achieve the best result.

This means streamlining workflows, improving task management, mitigating errors, making sure everyone who needs to be is on the same page — and so forth. 

Our content creation platform enables every permitted user to create high-quality, unique, bespoke content anytime, anywhere. By reducing bottlenecks you can scale up your content marketing activities without losing control of brand identity or the more high-level elements of content marketing and publication that are better left to the company’s experts. 

Adopting this approach has helped us learn so much more about how to empower people throughout our organization to create high-quality content. We’ve had great results and we’re happy to share them.

Foleon & CMI White Paper

How to Overcome Content Creation Barriers

Why the time is now for B2B marketers to develop modern digital content experiences.