Quality content starts with creating content your audience finds helpful or solves a problem for them.
Content marketing is quickly becoming the buzz word of the year and for good reason. It allows for brands to establish themselves as experts in their fields and coupled with the power of social media allows you to showcase the best your brand has to offer all while embracing the philosophy of providing usefulness.
The problem with creating content is that too often smaller brands without the leverage of huge budgets and teams of content creators are often hung up on the notion that quality content needs to be perfect and that if they don't create perfect content they will be ignored. This notion that content needs to be perfect often freezes individuals and brands from producing any content at all and puts them at a disadvantage that could eventually lead to losing the front of mind that most brands are so desperate to capture.
This paralysis and fear of not creating content also extends to the tools we use as well. It is common place for many of us to feel that without a professional writer or designer on staff or without purchasing the best digital camera on the market to use in creating content they will simply fail and decide to not engage in content creation at all. If you look in your pocket chances are you'll find a very powerful content creation tool at your disposal in your mobile phone and personally my phone is more powerful than my first computer. These devices that we carry with us often have HD cameras that allow us to shoot and edit great photos and videos that we can use in our content marketing efforts.
Then we have this new phenomenon where businesses engage in competition to prove that the industry they are involved in is the most boring of all. I have never understood this value proposition. Why are you trying to claim that no one is interested in your industry and that it is too boring to create content around? Is their truly nothing of value that you can offer to those looking for more information related to your industry? When working to sell your services or product do you start the conversation with "Listen, I know we are really boring but I'd like to talk to you about something?" of course not because you're never going to be successful in this approach. The same goes for content marketing, stop taking the boring approach and instead focus on creating content that shows how unique your brand is and provide answers to common questions you receive that can then be used to provide assistance to others looking for the same information.
One of my current favourite quotes comes from Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg where he had this to say about how Facebook operates and how they innovate:
Move fast and break things
What I take from this and how I believe it applies to social media and content creation is that you need to just get it out there and get your message in front of those who want it the most. If the content you create has a misspelled word, a grammatical mistake or some choppy camera work in the end who cares because the quality of the information and the message you are sharing will carry through.
You also will learn from the experience, making the creation process go quicker the next time as you will know where you went wrong previously and each iteration going forward will improve upon the last until you reach the point where the quality of your presentation matches the already high quality of information that was contained in the content you were already creating.
What brands and especially brands with a limited budget need to remember is that in this era of social marketing and content creation is that the way to differentiate yourself is through helping others and becoming a resource that others turn to when in need of assistance and further information. Your budget and your fears cannot limit you in this endeavour or you will end up losing to a competitor who is willing to put themselves out in front of their audience regardless if their flaws and mistakes show or not.
Getting hung up and frozen in place trying to decide what type of content to create, be it image, video or written or basing your content decision on what others are doing should not influence how you produce your content. Instead turn to your audience and choose to create the content that best aligns with what they are looking for and what best serves the need of your brand. If you create videos that do nothing to help your brand and your audience then you have wasted precious resources from your business that could have been invested elsewhere.
I guess in the end all I'm trying to say is that content creation and social media are here to stay and your brand needs to take advantage of this opportunity to market itself through these channels. So get out there, take a chance and prove your usefulness to others by creating content that inspires, educates, informs, entertains and most of all provides help to those most looking for it because this is how you will succeed and remember that your content need not be perfect only useful to someone.
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