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

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

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

6. 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

7. Creating genuine content

8. Creating genuine content

9. 1st steps in creating genuine content

10. 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

11. 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

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