Every business, at times, struggles to deliver unique, compelling and valuable content to its audience on a regular basis. It happens. Sometimes the well runs dry for a time.
That's normal.
So, when you find yourself struggling to produce staggering works of content genius, keep posting, keep pitching and keep getting your brand out in front of your audience until the spark returns.
When in a creative content drought, marketers and content creators can get too focused on developing the next mind-blowing, view-exploding piece of content and fail to see some quick win content resources right under their noses.
Don't get us wrong.
Compelling and value-driven offers are absolutely essential and need to be a marketer and content creator's bread and butter. But maintaining a reliable cadence-i.e. staying consistent-is very important as well.
Here are some quick win public relations and content sources for businesses that can help relieve the content crush and prevent a content blackout:
New Hire Announcement
Recently hire a great new team member? This is perfect easy win content for both a local press release, blog post, a marketing email, social media announcement and short-form video.
That's one idea that yields 5 different pieces content.
- Start with developing a press release. Pitch it to local media while also building a landing page for the press release.
- Promote the new hire announcement via email and social media.
- An entire mini-campaign can be built from a quick interview of the new hire, a copy of their resume, a quick look at their LinkedIn page and some elbow grease.
The downside here is that you can't control when new people come on board, so there's a level of unpredictability. That said, you can stick to the staff theme by creating meet the team blogs, videos or emails on a semi-regular basis. You can control that and your staff- both new and veteran- can be a great source of easy public relations and marketing content wins.
Community Service/Team Building Events
If your organization is active in the community, or regularly engages in fun and intersting team building activities, use these events for a brand-focused content campaign.
The key here is being prepared in advance to capture the event. It's possible to retroactively create content from an event that's already happened, but it's far more difficult to do.
Be ready to take photos or video and to actively pursue participant quotes from both your team and the partner organization. Having a content plan for every community service or staff event should become best practice for your marketing efforts.
Again, one event, one volunteer activity, can yield multiple pieces of content for blogs, emails, press releases and social media, which will fill the gap until your next exciting eBook, infographic, case study or white paper is ready for release.
ICYMI (In Case You Missed It) Recaps
Generating new content from older content is an efficient way to maintain a regular cadence when great ideas are hard to come by.
- Create a 'best of" blog linking to older but valuable posts focused on a single audience pain point
- Build an email newsletter template that recaps the prior month's blog activities and shares your most recent newsworthy events
- Identify a series of blogs focused on an audience pain point and take the best of that content and combine it into an eBook or infographic or short white paper. You don't always have to start from scratch.
Don't look at content that's been used before as static and dead. With minimal effort, you can create fresh, new content across a variety of vehicles by mining older content for quick public relations and marketing wins.
Company Awards, Individual Accolades and Conference Activities
Third party validation goes a long way to enhancing the credibility of your brand and the team that gives it life.
Build a content plan around award wins, individual staff accomplishments and conference attendance and participation. Again, it's harder and less efficient to try to build content retroactively- it can be done but it's heavier lifting for sure.
Most companies and team members actively pursue awards and visibility at major industry conferences. Leverage their efforts for your marketing and public relations content calendar.
There can also be an element of unpredictability here, but again, there typically are annual awards and conferences that are regularly on the company calendar and can be planned for. Plan ahead and you'll reap the rewards of piles of useful content to supplement your primary content strategy.
- Award wins or placements are great for blogs or social posts, and if very competitive and prominent, for obtaining media coverage
- Individual staff recognition, depending on their newsworthiness, can be great for a variety of uses: email announcement, blog, press release and social
- Conference seminars and presentations- if you are prepared in advance- can be used as recorded webinars or can be livestreamed, if allowed.
Marketers and content creators can't always rely only on divine inspiration or the muse for content production.
Those great ideas will come. But a steady foundation of content ideas can be found all around you if you know where to look and you make sure to keep the lines of communication strong between marketing and other departments.
Keep that pipeline open. Keep your finger on the pulse of company activity.
And you'll be shocked at how fertile the seemingly mundane can be for your content marketing endeavors.
If you'd like to learn the latest best practices for developing and pitching company news like promotions, big contract wins and new hires, click the button below for a free and immediate download of our Press Release Best Practices Guide.