B2B Technology and Software Copywriter

This article was originally published by the Content Marketing Institute.

Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” If your content marketing is on autopilot and you’re not getting the results you want, I wouldn’t say you’re insane, but you could certainly use some fresh ideas.

Unremarkable content can also be a big problem if you’re in an industry, such as technology, that relies on innovation.  If your marketing does not reflect the innovation that goes into your products or services, it can put you at a disadvantage by making you look either boring or too complex.

Here are three tips to help you break out of your content marketing rut.

Look Outside Your Industry

One of my friends, Krister Shalm, works in quantum physics — a topic most people would say they don’t understand. However, Krister has a gift for making physics accessible and entertaining. He recently held a talk called, “Quantum Physics and the Magic of Harry Potter.” By showing how quantum physics was used in the popular series, he sold out his two-night show and educated people of all ages about his field. Krister even timed the talks to coincide with the release of the final Harry Potter movie,  which also helped increase his audience.

If you can relate your content to something that is popular or newsworthy, you may attract more publicity and a larger audience.

Try a Different Medium

Does your organization always publish data sheets when your audience really prefers white papers? If your content isn’t reaching your ideal audience, you may need to change your delivery method. Determine what kind of content works best for communicating with your audience. For example, if they are auditory learners, you may want to record podcasts; if they typically spend a lot of their time on YouTube, you can consider using your content as the basis of a video series.

You can also repurpose your content in ways that might attract an expanded audience. For example, you can turn one of your webinars into a white paper, video series, blog posts, or social media updates. This means that if people missed a live webinar you offered, they could still find the content through their favorite social media networks or other channels.

Try Something New Within an Existing Medium

I recently wrote an article for Chief Content Officer Magazine called “Reimaging the Tried-and-True White Paper.” The article explores how new technology, such as interactive white papers and video white papers, is helping marketers improve the ROI from their lead-generation campaigns.

Experimenting with newer content features and options is a great way to put a fresh spin on the content you offer through a reliable medium like print. For example, try adding interactive components to your next white paper such as video or custom content that is relevant to each reader’s industry or role. You can also make your existing content more social by encouraging comments and adding social sharing features. This can make your message more exciting or accessible while giving you an opportunity to share more information about your organization.

Remember: Although there are endless ways to make your message stand out, you must always keep your focus on creating content that is relevant to your buyers’ needs. If your content is not relevant, all the extras will be a waste of your marketing effort and budget.

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If you had the opportunity to attend Content Marketing World, or if you’ve been checking out all of the Content Marketing Institute’s amazing videos from the event, you may have lots of ideas on how to improve your content marketing.

However, many organizations fail to see ROI from their content marketing because they don’t create a plan for getting everything done.

This blog post will show you how to get your content marketing efforts moving forward with the help of an editorial calendar. An editorial calendar provides you with a quick overview of your content marketing strategy and outlines exactly what tasks need to be completed.

Here are five things you must do when you create an editorial calendar for content marketing:

1. Know your audience

One thing I mention in almost all of my blog posts is the importance of making your content relevant to your buyers’ needs. If your audience doesn’t think your content is geared specifically toward them, they won’t be interested in it.

Before you develop an editorial calendar, you’ll need to understand who your target audience is, what their biggest concerns are and what types of content they want. You can do this by creating buyer personas, surveying your target audience to understand their needs, or asking your customer service team about the conversations they have with buyers. Once you understand your target audience, you can come up with content that helps to meet their needs and solve their challenges.

2. Identify the gaps in your content

When you make an editorial calendar, you should anticipate any content gaps you’ll have in the upcoming year. For example, if you are planning a major product launch or event, you’ll need content to support these items. It’s better to plan for these gaps early on so that you don’t panic when deadlines are approaching and you don’t have the right content on hand.

3. Plan for special themes

Many magazines highlight different themes each month. You can apply a similar approach to your content marketing. For example, you can pick the top 12 biggest concerns your target audience has and address a different concern each month. You can also make predictions for the upcoming year or tie some of your content into holidays or seasonal concerns.

Themes not only make it easier for your in-house team to develop content, but they are also useful for advertisers and guest contributors. Anyone who advertises on your blog or in your other materials will need to know your editorial themes in advance so they can see if their ads will be a match for your audience at a given time. Guest contributors can also connect the topics of their blog posts and articles to your themes.

4. Decide on your publishing schedule

As you plan an editorial calendar, you’ll need to answer the following questions:

• What are you going to publish and how content do you plan to publish for each effort?
• How often are you going to publish?
• Who will be responsible for researching, writing, designing, approving, publishing, and sharing the content?

 5.     Keep multiple editorial calendars

Last year, Michele Linn wrote a great post in which she suggested creating multiple editorial calendars. The first one should be a master calendar that provides a quick overview of all the content you have planned, broken down by day and week. The other calendars should focus on tasks for specific projects such as your blog or newsletter. Multiple calendars allow you to see the big picture as well as ensure each project is on track.

Your editorial calendar doesn’t need to be complicated. You can keep it in an Excel file and use different tabs for each project. You can also try Google Calendar or another team collaboration tool to automatically send out reminders when deadlines are approaching.

What about you? Do you use an editorial calendar to keep track of your content marketing? If not, are you thinking about using one? Feel free to share your thoughts below.

This post was originally published by the Content Marketing Institute.