Follow the money – 5 critical questions to ask

Creating content is not that hard. Honestly, you can make good content about every detail of your company. Believe us.

Give us a huge bag of money and we’ll do it. We can interview employees, shoot an ‘authentic’ video with the ceo, jump into the archive for a trip into memory lane, make a compilation of your greatest hits, create a white paper on your future projects… With our creativity and craftsmanship, you’ll get the best content you wish for.

Moreover, nowadays everyone in your company is able to create content. Great! And a lot cheaper 😉 More content, more ideas, more creativity, more enthusiasm.

Sales is creating, marketing is, Greet from the reception and even the big chief! 
Fantastic. Yet, if everyone is creating content in every corner of the company, we think: risk of fragmentation, a possible waste of effort, maybe a waste of money too?

And that’s when strategy comes in.

For a good content strategy – just like with any strategy – it’s key to dive into your business, analyze the opportunities, define business drivers and to focus on the real deal. Set aside your creativity or imagination (for a while) and ask yourself a few tough questions.

Keep one thing in mind while doing this exercise: Follow the money

Question 1: Which product, service, proposition is your most important value driver?
– Think big business drivers
– Future growth pockets

Question 2: Who drives our value
– Analyze which target groups stick to these value drivers
– Segment them

Question 3: Can you personalize your most important target groups
Describe this target group as if they were real persons aka persona

Question 4: How can you reach them?
Investigate which channels this personae resides on

Question 5: What’s the content language they prefer?
Create a customized content plan for this persona, tailored to the channels that they frequent. It sounds simple, but this exercise is crucial if you want to start a moneymaking content strategy. Start at the business result and break it down into segments and channels. As soon as you have this clear; let the content planning start!

Quick Pitch: think content waterfall

1. decide on which platform you gain the most of value
2. put your most expensive & highly effective content format on that platform
3. adapt image/text/format to other platforms
4. nothing wrong with reuse of images if you adapt your content language
5. and keep in mind: only create content if you can monetize it somewhere somehow

First follow the money on your balance, then follow your personae responsible for that money. And believe us, you can return the favor by creating valuable content.

Everybody happy!