Avoiding creating content for vanity’s sake Company objectives vs. Customer interest

Why do brands want content? Brand awareness Brand engagement SEO Drive sales Everyone else is doing it Interact with customers Highlight product Be an authority Be a trusted advisor Can take a customer from a browser to a spender

What do you hear most as a content creator? ASOS/ Net-a-Porter/INSERT NAME have done this… We’ve bought loads of X how can we push it? Sales are down on X, create some content to highlight it We want to create a trend around something we’ve bought We know X is getting lots of searches, but we want to focus on Y The traffic to that hard to find article was very low That trend piece didn’t make us sell more of X Let’s create a video of models dancing around Let’s do a behind the scenes… Just put in on YouTube/Instagram/Facebook/Twitter

The main issues you run into The brand not knowing why it really wants content Not knowing how to use content Content hidden away into a separate part of the site Content that’s not engaging or relevant to the customer Want content but afraid of content No clear brand guidelines Your content creator’s view of the brand and customer is not the same as the business The customer does not come first

Time for the random analogy bit… Content The brand/product

So, why does all this matter? Content needs to have an end result – whether it’s driving sales or brand engagement So it must be content that engages the customer on some level You don’t need to write about everything, or creating videos about ‘how to tie a tie’ because X did You need to tailor the content to you, and your brand Customers are busy, so less fluff, and more focused content is king

Creating genuine content

Creating genuine content

1st steps in creating genuine content

Your mantra Listen to the customer Question everything Be absorbed in your product Speak to a range of functions in the business Ask yourself why am I doing this? What does this do for the customer? When challenged with an area ‘to push’ think like the customer not the retailer Reflect on competitors, don’t necessarily copy Read anything and everything Know your customer Recognise that they may not be early adopters Challenge back and find a customer-centric solution

The role of the modern content creator It goes beyond writing articles… Learn to interweave content throughout the customer journey Utilise search and analytics to inform your decisions Don’t think of content as just articles; look to hotspots, fly outs, curated journeys… Improve navigation to reflect customer interests You should be the closest link to the customer, and therefore the most valuable person to the brand

Remove yourself from the vanity cycle Think like the customer Be the customer champion Don’t limit the applications of content