Digital marketing strategies have changed drastically in the last few years, with the rise of new channels, new generations of consumers, and of course, artificial intelligence. But one thing stays the same: content is still king.
In all industries, creating high-value content is still crucial to reaching your audience, nurturing long-lasting connections, and earning those all-important sales. Unfortunately, staying on top of the content creation lifecycle is harder than ever. Not only do you need to create more content than ever before, to keep up with competitors using AI to scale, but you need more types of content too.
You can’t just publish a regular blog these days and expect great results. You need to be constantly connecting with customers through social media and email, nurturing leads and driving them through the sales funnel. It’s exhausting, frustrating, and for many busy small business owners – unsustainable.
The good news? There are ways to overcome the major content creation challenges you might face today. Even better? There’s one solution you can consider that could help you leap numerous hurdles at once. Read on for the answers to your content creation woes.
Challenge 1: Maintaining Consistency
Consistency is valuable. The more you share engaging, branded content with your customers at the right times across channels, the more familiar your organisation becomes. That familiarity breeds trust, boosts brand awareness, and ultimately helps you to convert more customers in the long-term.
In fact, consistent brands are worth 20% more than their competitors. But consistency is difficult to maintain. The chances are you’re not just responsible for creating and sharing content – you might be running your business, creating products, and conducting research too.
Other parts of your schedule can easily get in the way, forcing you to rush through content creation just to get posts “out on time”, or miss out on content opportunities entirely.
The Solution:
Create and use a content calendar. Design a calendar based on what you know about your customers, the best times for engagement on the platforms you’re using, and your availability. Once you have your calendar, look for ways you can make it easier to stick to it, such as by using automation tools, outsourcing tasks to a VA, or packing your calendar with deadlines and alerts.
Challenge 2: Scaling Content Production
Take a look at some of the most successful brands in the digital world. They don’t just post one blog a month. They’re constantly scaling their content creation efforts, producing endless articles, social media posts, podcasts, and videos.
Why? Because to stay ahead in today’s world, you need to show your customers that you’re active, up-to-date on the latest news, and invested in delivering constant value.
So, how do you scale content production without compromising on quality, or making your schedule even harder to manage?
The Solution:
Make the most of your existing assets. Scaling content production doesn’t have to mean creating endless new content. Instead, it could simply mean converting your existing assets into new resources. Use existing blog posts to create videos or podcast episodes. Dive into your webinars and eBooks for quotes you can share on social media. Make your existing assets go further.
Challenge 3: Finding the Time for Content Creation
It’s easy to underestimate just how time consuming content creation is. You’re not just spending an hour, or two writing email campaigns or social media posts each week – or you shouldn’t be. You need to spend time sourcing ideas, conducting research, optimising content for the search engines, and promoting whatever you publish.
Content creation is a full-time job. Even with access to AI and tools to help you, you can’t automate everything. If you’re also running a business, it’s easy to run out of time.
The Solution
Automation and AI tools are great for giving yourself more time in your schedule, but the best way to boost your results is with outsourcing. Outsourcing your content creation, repurposing, scheduling, and data analytics tasks to an expert gives you more freedom to focus on what you do best. Plus, you’ll gain access to expertise and skills that can help improve your content ROI.
Challenge 4: Maintaining Engagement
Brands that master customer engagement are 41% more likely to report higher conversion rates. It takes more than a single interaction with a customer to turn them into a loyal buyer. You need to constantly engage with your customers, answering their questions on social media, responding to market trends, and reminding them of what your company can do.
However, engagement, like content creation, takes time. The chances are you don’t have the time in your schedule to respond to each comment on social media manually or send individual emails to each of your potential leads.
The Solution
Here, automation is probably the most powerful tool you can leverage. Automated tools that allow you to respond to customers instantly (with chatbots and AI) or send messages to consumers based on specific triggers (like when they make a purchase with your store), makes engagement easier to manage. The key is to find the right balance between too much, and too little automation.
Challenge 5: Finding Inspiration
Finally, the fact that companies now need to create more content than ever before to stay “visible” in a competitive market doesn’t just create issues with scale limitations. It also means that you need to constantly find inspiration for the content you’re going to produce.
That isn’t easy. Even if you have tools that help you to assess the competition and draw insights from recent market trends, it can be difficult to find a unique perspective for your content that really makes it stand out. Regurgitating content other companies create won’t get you anywhere.
So, what can you do?
The Solution: Collaboration
Again, the answer here is to make sure content creation and promotion isn’t a solo job. Work with influencers and thought leaders to create new content. Ask other members of your team to share ideas about topics that your customers might be interested in. This will give you new and diverse ways to enhance your lead generation strategy.
The Ultimate Solution to Your Content Creation Challenges
As you can see, there are ways to overcome all of the challenges mentioned above – but even these solutions come with their caveats. For instance:
- Creating and managing content calendars takes time and discipline.
- Repurposing content requires creativity and specific skills.
- Finding the right people to outsource content creation tasks to is complex.
- Leveraging automation too much can diminish your content’s human appeal.
- Collaborating with teams requires excellent communication and leadership skills.
So, what’s the easiest, most powerful alternative? Work with a company like Beyond The Scroll, a specialist VA who can create and manage content calendars for you, rapidly repurpose content to ensure your assets go further, and help you connect with the right collaborators and outsourced teams.
They know how to use technology to their advantage and can help you to scale your content strategy and unlock new sources of inspiration, without compromising on your “human touch”. They give you the freedom you need to run your business, without requiring you to compromise on content marketing success.
Discover an All-in-One Solution to Content Challenges
Content creation isn’t easy, particularly as the landscape becomes more saturated with new competitors, and AI tools. But you still need exceptional content if you want to capture, nurture, and convert your leads. That’s where companies like Beyond The Scroll come in.
I offer an all-in-one solution to all of your most significant content creation and management challenges, helping you to increase your ROI, and avoid exhaustion. If you’re feeling stuck, unable to expand, or drowned out by the competition, now is the time to make a change.
Reach out and discover how our all-in-one solution can eliminate your content challenges once and for all.