Does Your Content Have the X Factor?

If you Google the term “Content Marketing” you get more than 1 billion hits. That’s 1,000,000,000+ … and the number continues to grow hourly.

CONTENT is the biggest thing in marketing today. Every company wants it. Every agency is selling it. And every person with a smartphone, tablet or laptop can create it.

Content is everywhere, partially because it is so easy to create — anyone with an internet connection can be a content publisher — and partially because it’s a lot easier to be your own publisher than to convince another publisher to tell your story for you.  (And of course, for many agencies pushing self-published content, it’s become a low-risk cash cow.)

Unfortunately, most of the business content that is created never finds its target audience. Often, it’s lonelier than the Maytag repairman on Saturday night.

Not because it’s poorly constructed, has weak production values or is feeble at storytelling, but because the focus of the content is off … by just one letter.

People are so enamored with their capability to be “content producers” … so focused on the actual creation process that they forget WHY and WHO they should be creating the content for. The real business purpose behind the content is to attract and engage a specific audience.

The key to that attraction and engagement is conteXt. Webster defines conteXt as the environment, the surroundings or the setting.

To provide conteXt for your content, think about your target audience and ask: Who are they? What’s their situation? Where do they go for information? What are their problems? What do they need? What’s of interest to them? What are their beliefs? What do they value? Who do they believe?

If you let the X factor of conteXt drive your content … if you focus on your audience’s situation, instead of your own … you’ll have more success.

Business Best Practices: Every Office Needs an Eagle Eye

(Post by Jessica Killenberg Muzik, APR, Vice President – Account Services)

I’ve always had a love of editing.  Sure, as a communicator I like to write, but there’s something about editing that I enjoy even more. 

Perhaps it’s taking a fresh eye at something and realizing that you caught an error before it went out the door that feels almost rewarding … or perhaps it’s knowing that one small editing suggestion made the final written product that much better?

Whatever the case may be, at our office we call this person an “eagle eye” – which, by definition, is one that observes with close attention. Yep, that sounds about right.

As long as I can remember, we’ve always been in the practice of having an eagle eye review and proofread our work before it is sent to a client / reporter, is posted to the newswire / website, etc. Typically, this eagle eye staffer has been uninvolved in the drafting process for this project, so she or he comes to this review with a clean, fresh perspective.

Why uninvolved? Why an eagle eye?

Well, it’s pretty simple. As writers, sometimes we are too close to our own work to see the imperfections. Our minds tend to gloss over typos and fill in the gaps between what we wrote and what we thought we wrote.

When you have someone who is far removed from a project take a final look at a document, they will often catch a mistake or two that those closer to the project may have simply overlooked.

It adds a step and a little time, but taking the time to do things correctly the first time actually ends up saving time, money … and, often, embarrassment.

Having an eagle eye is a safety net. 

Even still, mistakes occasionally can and will happen. We’re only human, after all.

But having an eagle eye process in place can minimize mistakes and enhance credibility, especially when writing is a key part of your business.

What best business practices have you implemented within your organization to catch potential mistakes before they happen?