By Tom Andronas
Watch the full presentation!
“I know my business should be doing more communications and content, but where do I start?”
This is a question we hear all the time.
The process we’ve developed to help clients answer this question is laid out step-by-step in this article. I’m essentially giving you the keys to the city, so I hope you find it helpful!
We’re hoping you’ll take away an understanding of how to feel your way through building your own content campaign, or the questions you should be thinking about if you’re dealing with a communications / content provider, like us.
Content is like Paris – kind of.
Literary geeks will recall a quote from Ernest Hemingway where he refers to Paris as, “a moveable feast.”
That metaphor might sound like a bit of a stretch in this context, but the thing to grab onto here is that everything in this environment is an experiment, an opportunity to experiment, be creative, and learn and adapt according to the results, then take that with you on the next campaign.
That’s because the parameters in this world are constantly changing. There’s always new tech becoming available, different production methods, distribution platforms are constantly shifting the goalposts, and we have no option but to roll with those punches.
The framework we’re going to step through today is our framework, which we’ve developed over the past few years. It’s all about deeply considering what you’re trying to achieve, then putting the building blocks in place to ensure it’s done effectively and efficiently.
It’s one way of looking at this, but not the only way, and it isn’t perfect. But we’re constantly developing and refining it according to what we’ve tried, what’s worked, and what hasn’t.
Why?
Our framework is based on the standard who, what, when, where, why, how that a journalist might use – just in a different order.
The first and most important question is: “why”? And it’s a question that not everyone will ask you.
With the tech we all have available to us today, you can get just about anyone to make you a video or produce you a podcast, but if they don’t ask you why, they’re doing you a disservice.
We believe it’s critical to start by setting up some clear and realistic objectives, to understand what you’re trying to achieve.
Objectives might include: to raise awareness of your brand; to draw attention to an event; to increase sales enquiries; or to get more face time with relevant sales or industry contacts.
These are all valid, and there are plenty more, but understanding your objectives is critical to constructing an implementation plan that is holistic, effective, and efficient.
Who?
In a past life, I was a producer at radio station 3AW, and one day former federal Labor leader Bill Shorten was in the studio being interviewed by Neil Mitchell.
As you’d expect, Neil had Bill on his toes, and at one point Bill said something so ridiculous and apparently strategically flawed, that I was gobsmacked.
I can’t remember exactly what he said, but I turned to a senior colleague and expressed my surprise.
That colleague replied, “yes, that might have been a ridiculous blunder, but if it wasn’t, think about who he might have been saying it to. Maybe he’s targeting a specific group who he knows is listening right now, trying to get a message to them.”
In that moment I came to understand audience, and how critical it is to understand exactly who you’re talking to, all the time.
So when you’re considering your target audience for your content campaign, think widely and specifically.
Your audience could include various customer segments, referrers, internal team, shareholders, the board, members of your organisation, industry groups, media – the list of examples is long, but your specific targets will be much tighter, depending on what your business does.
It’s also super important to understand where your target customers are hanging out. And for that you’ll need to understand their demographics. For example:
Business people generally hang out on LinkedIn, probably read the AFR and their industry press, possibly listen to 3AW or ABC radio, are probably streaming podcasts, and might dabble in Instagram in their down time;
However, a mum and dad demographic is more likely to be hanging out on Facebook, reading the Herald Sun, and watching The Block.
Understanding who you are targeting is critical, because along with your objectives, it’ll determine your messaging, your tactics, and ultimately your content plan.
What?
There are two key questions when considering messaging. The first is: “what do we want our audience to hear?”
In formulating this, we need to consider our campaign objectives, think about which specific audience segment(s) we’re targeting, what we want them to learn about us, and what action we want them to take when they engage with our content.
In particular, what is the first/next step in their customer journey and what should our call to action be?
All of those questions will go into forming a series of messages. These can be specific, or they can be thematic, but they will guide our content production further down the track.
The second question is: “what does our audience want to hear from us?” And that’s by far the more important of the two questions, because it gets to the core of what we’re aiming to do through our content campaign, and that’s conveying value.
Why? Because to convince someone to do what you want, you have to add value to their life.
To get some insight into what our audience wants to hear from us, we should have a look at our unique value proposition. What is it that we offer that nobody else does? That’s where our value lies.
A way I often encourage clients to consider this, is that if the content they’re trying to pass off as valuable can be easily found via a Google search, it’s not valuable, and they should try again.
How?
As we know, there’s an ever-expanding array of tactical channels available to us.
In this framework, tactics are distribution channels. It’s important to understand these, because they will determine what content needs to be made within which parameters.
But don’t feel like you need to tackle everything, all at once. Instead, let’s reflect back on our objectives, audiences and messages - they will help us determine where we should place our content, and therefore, what content we should create.
Content
So, we’ve reached the 5th step in our content planning framework, and we’re only just talking about the content itself! In our view, that’s critical to avoid putting the cart before the horse.
It’s at this stage, once we understand our objectives, audience, messaging and tactics, that we can make some decisions about what hero content we’re going to create, and all the babies it’s going to give birth to.
I’ll explain the hero concept in a moment, but a piece of hero content could be:
Video – a company profile video, a monthly market update, a customer testimonial, a piece of thought leadership;
Podcast / vodcast – interviews with customers, chats with industry colleagues, professional development, advice;
Blog – a long-form blog article or White Paper;
Press release – an announcement that garners earned media;
Opinion article – a piece published somewhere outside of your business’ owned assets;
A piece of thought leadership like the one you’re reading right now.
Consider what your options might be based on the work we’ve already done in this framework – where your audience is hanging out, how they’re consuming content, and how you’re going to retarget them.
You could also have a look at what your competitors are doing and whether it’s working. This could give you ideas of what to do, what not to do, or which gaps might be vacant for your content to fill.
The hero/hub model
Once we’ve established what our hero piece is going to be, we come to an unfortunate truth: saying something once, isn’t going to be effective. You need to say it regularly and repeatedly for it to sink in.
But for it not to get boring, you also have to be creative.
So, to give yourself the best opportunity to achieve your objectives, we recommend implementing the hero / hub / hygiene model.
Silly name, effective strategy. Don’t blame us, we didn’t name it!
You might have also heard this referred to as a “content pillars” strategy.
This is the practice of taking your hero content and breaking it up into smaller pieces, to make it go further, and direct more eyeballs back to your hero.
It’s also designed to help your message cut through the noise, and help your target audience to remember it, through creative repetition.
The content you derive from your hero piece can be divided up into ‘hub’ content, which is higher value, higher production, and ‘hygiene’ content, which is lower value, lower production.
In this example, one of our clients (Triskele Labs, a cyber security provider) records a monthly vodcast, where they get one or two of their team together and talk about something they’re uniquely positioned to talk about, and capture it via an online platform. That’s their hero piece.
We then take that, post-produce it, and spit out a full-length version, which is usually about 30-40 minutes long.
Then we also break it up into 3-4 sections, and produce 60-second video highlight cuts, as well as a blog article for each section, to be hosted on YouTube, their website, and be distributed on LinkedIn.
Then we also produce a handful of social media graphics using quotes from the articles, also for use on social media.
In this way, that one hero piece ends up becoming anywhere up to 16 or more pieces of content. That’s enough to keep the conversation going on social media for a month.
One of the most important reasons to structure your content in this way is that you don’t have to repeatedly invest in creating hero content. You could do it monthly, quarterly, or even less regularly, depending on your objectives.
Using this method, you can create periodic hero content, then build the rest of your campaign around getting people to consume it.
KPIs
The last step, whether you’re producing your own campaign, or engaging with a business like ours, is to be real about what you expect the outcomes to be.
Ask yourself: what does success look like? And make sure that your KPIs relate directly to your objectives.
One way of doing that is to set SMART goals – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
This is a really important step, because it holds you or your agency accountable to your campaign objectives, but it also illustrates what’s working, what’s not, and how you might need to re-jig your campaign, keeping in mind the “moveable feast” Paris metaphor from earlier.
Execution
And so, we’ve come to the end of the framework process, and although it might seem overwhelming, I hope it helps you understand how we put campaigns together for our clients, and how you too can give it a go.
The beauty of this process is that it’s totally scalable, from a one-person operation doing all the strategy and content production yourself on an iPhone or Zoom; through to an SME, larger business, or government department working with a business like ours; through to a massive business who might be engaging with the biggest comms and marketing agencies in the world.
What’s obvious though, is that if your business isn’t doing this stuff, you’re missing out on a massive opportunity to talk directly with your target audiences, on your terms, and all the growth potential that comes along with that.
So, that’s how you build a content campaign!
Any questions?