5 Steps to starting your content stream

By Microsoft in Business Team

November 16, 2017

You have your strategy in place, you’ve defined your goals, audience, strengths, and message, you’ve refined your focus and figured out your structure, and now it’s time to start creating. When it comes to producing your content stream, it’s easy to just start throwing pieces of content together based on what you know. This “post at your own convenience” approach is one of the first pitfalls for aspiring content creators and often results in sporadic posting, a disconnected audience, and often leads to the abandonment of the entire campaign. In 2016, 27% of B2B content marketers considered producing content consistently to be one of their most significant challenges. So then, what can creators do to not only start their content stream, but to do so reliably? Step 1: Audit your assets Often, organizations overlook their existing resources when it comes to content creation. We get so caught up in generating new ideas and building out exciting campaigns that we overlook the stacks of potential content sitting on outdated webpages or crowded servers. Whitepapers, reports, press releases, memos, social posts, manuscripts—anything with a core concept can repurposed into engaging content. Take the time to explore and document the assets you have collecting dust, and determine which of those properties could be reskinned, redesigned, or rewritten to serve your new campaign. Don’t be afraid to cut individual pieces apart and plug them into new creations, or to revitalize an older post to fit into a new campaign.

Collecting and repurposing old content is a great way to flesh out your content stream and lean on your brand’s legacy resources without requiring extensive research. Step 2: Refine your strategy With your collected assets in place, it’s time to refine your strategy. Strategies are fluid—meaning they’re designed change as you collect more data. In this case, that data is what you do, and don’t, already have at hand. Maybe in your audit you realize your brand has an excellent back log of sales training resources that could be repurposed into a trouble-shooting series for your audience; maybe you don’t have as much research on hand as you thought—the discoveries you make after collecting your existing content resources should help inform where your strategy needs to go. Step 3: Build your Editorial Calendar The editorial calendar is the backbone of your campaign. Typically an Excel document, this calendar works to pre-plan your work-back schedule and set goals and deadlines for when your content should go live. The editorial calendar is where you establish concepts, summarize ideas, designate audiences, assign authors, settle on topics, call-to-actions, and any other details that may speak to your brand’s unique campaign. There are dozens of editorial calendar templates out there. You can borrow ours, or even build your own. This document is the roadmap to your content stream.

By building out a detailed editorial calendar, you not only create a richer understanding of your campaign’s length and core details, but organize your content delivery dates for a more consistent campaign. In addition to a final posting schedule, establish dates for early drafts a week or two ahead of your final posting time to account for revisions, SEO additions, and other changes. This way, your team isn’t scrambling to generate ideas or fill out a content piece, and instead, can queue pieces up to go live ahead of schedule. Step 4: Execute your plan Once your editorial calendar is in place, it’s time to start creating. You’ve done the pre-planning and built out the strategy—get out there and bring your content stream to life. The early part of the execution stage is where you lock down where each piece of content will eventually live. Whether it’s a Twitter handle, YouTube page, or company blog, make sure you have a home in mind for the content your creating and that those addresses are locked down.

Highlight your core delivery dates and start researching, writing, and designing. If you have multiple content creators on your team, make sure that each member understands their responsibilities and expectations. Establish clear communication processes to ensure deadlines are met, and that team members know where to turn when questions arise. Step 5: Refine some more Content marketing is all about adaptation. Just because you’ve launched your campaign doesn’t mean it’s set in stone. As you release more and more content, pay attention to the data you’re creating. If something isn’t working, tweak it and try something new. Adjust your headlines, try a different design approach, restructure your social media—test one variable at a time until you start to trend in the right direction.

Kicking off your stream is an exciting stage in the content marketing experience, but remember, engagement takes time. Certainly, continue to adapt and evolve your campaign, but don’t give up just because your early numbers might not reflect your ambitions. Some pieces will do better than others, and when they do, that’s where you ought to focus in and really ask, “Why?”. Maybe your social engagement really hit its stride, maybe you identified a key point in your customer’s journey—use the good to shape your future direction.

In the coming weeks, we’ll look a little deeper at how brands can better shape their content streams, drive engagement, and put their audience at the core of their content experience. For more content marketing insight, visit our kick off blog, What is content marketing? Keys for enterprise content creators or go to the Microsoft in Marketing hub.