Get The Most Out Of Your Creative
content creators don’t just create out of nowhere. they also don’t like it when clients denigrate their work without providing any branding ideas.
I’m going to tell you how it is: we content creators do not produce content out of thin air. Also, there is nothing we hate more than when a client provides zero-to-no context about their brand, only to come back and complain about the content we created for them.
Sure, we’d love to create content that resonates with your target audience, but if we asked you three times to provide us that information and you never did then it’s more of a you problem.
So, don’t send us out there blindly only to chastise us when the content isn’t magically as you expected (you’re only wasting your own time). Instead, send us these five essential checkpoints for us to ensure we will hit the nail on the head the first time around:
1. Tell us about your brand
Because branding is a profound content marketing essential that unwinds throughout every industry. Think about it: can you imagine someone with a business in men's fashion asking a social media marketer to create engaging Instagram content without telling them a word about their branding? How can you expect the marketer to do what you want?
You have to tell your content creator about your branding, including beliefs, colour palette, message, tone, voice and anything else you want to convey to your customer.
2. Tell us about your company history
We want to know a little about your brand and its history before we can get started on creating top quality content. This is where we get to the essence of your brand and why, exactly, you set out to make it a massive success in the first place.
Here, you will tell us about your brand goals and target audience to ensure we know for who we are creating content. Otherwise, we might create a bunch of Target clothing content for a Balenciaga type brand.
3. Tell us your objectives
What do you seek to gain out of your content? Are you a new company looking to create brand awareness? Or, are you a pre-existing company looking to direct loyal customers right towards an online sale? Good content creators produce content based upon where your product is in the sales funnel.
You might have a brand new product that you need to make trustworthy (thus starting at the first or “awareness” stage), or a reputable product that is ready to be repurchased (thus entering at the last or “renewal” stage). Either way, you have to tell us a little bit about your objectives to get the most out of your content creation.
4. Have you got any examples for us?
Many business owners love what they see from other brands. It may be a competitor’s content, or it may be content from a completely different industry that you think will work for your product, either way it is always a good idea to give examples. Naturally, you might not have any, and that’s also fine, but they can be a great help for giving us content creators an idea of the tone you seek.
5. Be sure to give us feedback
We’re all for hearing your feedback. Whether you are thrilled with our content and want it to be the same going forward, or have some little tweaks that will ensure it is the Ulysses of content marketing, you can let us know exactly where we nailed it and the areas in which we can improve. Or, we might have got it completely wrong, in which case we gladly accept constructive and even condescending feedback.
But in 10 years in this industry that has *rarely* happened for yours truly.
