You’ve probably heard the mantra “Content is King” many times before. It’s an old saying (in fact, Bill Gates wrote his forward-thinking essay almost 20 years ago!) But the truth is, good content is now more important than ever. Content is more than king; it’s the world-superpower; the NWO; the inter-galactic emperor; the cosmos itself—whatever you think is the ultimate force behind everything, it’s that.
And unlike 20 years ago, social media gives content the power to spread like nothing Mankind has ever known. Just minutes after being published, good content can reach millions of people outside of your own audience.
The truly amazing thing is that great content is a force that any company can wield—it’s not just reserved for the big-wig ad agencies and billion dollar brands. Any company, from start-up to mom & pop shop, can create good content that spreads. All you need is a content culture. Here are the 3 rules to creating that culture:
Rule #1: Understand that everything is content.
The biggest mistake in creating great content is thinking that things fall into buckets of content and not-content. The truth is, everything your company makes is content. Every piece of communication is content. Your company name is content. Your employees are content. Your plastic bags are content. Anything that invites interaction is content.
Think long and hard about what your brand is at the highest level. Once you know who you are, work that content in to every consumer touch point possible.
Examples of good content at unexpected touch points:
Mystery Tackle Box phone support: (866) 825-9301. The fishing tips at the end are great.
Join.Me hold music. When on hold for a conference line, there is a funny song about being on hold, spoofing traditional boring hold music.
Improvenet.com 404 page. Nothing like a 404 page that makes you lol.
Good examples of business cards as content.
Dollar Shave Club even uses their source code as content. This is at the top of their source code:
<!-- Stop peaking up my skirt. Close this window and go shave. -->
Rule #2: Good content can come from anyone in your company
Most companies hire one or two people to create content for them (although many don’t even do that), as they should. But the second rule of good content is that it can come from anyone.
Incentivize all of your employees to create good content by turning it in to a game. The team at Mystery Tackle Box (a company I co-founded and currently advise) created an ongoing contest where they keep a leaderboard for the best content posted on Facebook and Instagram. There are columns for most likes, comments, shares, and total reach. Anyone can submit content to be posted and we give out prizes when a new spot on the leaderboard is taken. There is a similar contest for Instagram photos that get the most likes.
Here are some examples of content created by employees:
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Rule #3: Ask your customers/users to create great content, too
Leveraging your customers, fans or users to create content for you can be quite fruitful. Humans are a creative species and your audience is likely busting with great ideas.
Ask your audience to create content for you by creating user-generated content contests and hashtag campaigns. Let your audience run the conversation and see what they can produce.
Mystery Tackle Box ran a use-generated video contest asking subscribers and fans to #dancelikedibble by dancing with their monthly boxes (or any fishing equipment they had on-hand). Users entered the contest via Easy Promos app on Facebook and created some truly amazing videos. Here are a few:
[video:http://youtu.be/MtssskHyRG4]
[video:http://youtu.be/PJrORW7xGYA]
[video:http://youtu.be/ES8KaSNkmcs]
Bonus tips for your content culture:
- NEVER shoot down bad content ideas from employees. It poisons your content culture. Instead, suggest improvements.
- ALWAYS give credit to other peoples, content that you share. Stealing (and copyright infringement) is bad.
- ALWAYS Make your content easy to share with social media widgets.
- NEVER self-promote in a boring way (and rarely self-promote in general).
- ALWAYS use analytics to determine your best content.
Start implementing these rules today and transform the way your company creates content and engages with your audience!
