Back in 1996, Bill Gates wrote an article famously titled “Content Is King,” in which he predicted that content would be where much of the real money would be made on the Internet. Nearly 20 years later, his prediction is being borne out. Research shows that thanks to corporate websites, social media, and the availability of free digital content, many prospects are more than halfway through their buying cycle before they speak to a salesperson. Your potential customers are hungry for content, and if they don’t get it from you, they’ll go somewhere else. How can you build the infrastructure necessary to feed the content beast?
A culture of content is an organizational environment and attitude that embraces and evangelizes the importance of content marketing and internal knowledge sharing across the entire enterprise. A business that achieves an internal culture of content is one that inspires employees—not just those in marketing—to create content for both internal and external consumption. It’s a place where, as Ann Handley of MarketingProfs says, “Everybody writes.”
Handley’s thesis is that every member of an organization can be, and should be, a valuable content contributor. Her advice for those who see themselves as “bad” writers and who are therefore hesitant to contribute: “Just barf up what you want to say, and then reshape it into something that benefits your reader.” Though humorously phrased, the guidance is sound. A business seeking to foster a culture of content must clear away barriers to sharing and enable knowledge-holders’ ability to get what they know out there for the benefit of others inside and outside the organization.
To learn more about how to create a culture of content at your organization, download our eBook: “An Internal Culture of Content: The Secret to the Most Effective Content Marketing.”
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