Fresh and Paid Content: The Elephant in the Room.

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Prologue

I have made up my mind that I will not make this blog a soundboard of my opinions. However, the essence in this post, I admit, lingers between my experience and beliefs. Yes, there is the elephant in the room. It is the missing strategy for fresh and paid content.

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When was the last time you have seen a company allocating money from its annual budget towards fresh “content”?

There it is —the elephant in the room. The room in which the key stakeholders do strategic brainstorming to sustain and grow the business! Content strategy is never regarded on par the product development. Everyone around the table knows it. They wouldn’t admit the elephant to the room!

Several companies employ a full-time Content Writer and expect the person to consistently deliver exciting stuff relevant to their company’s areas of interest. Some may employ two such professionals or more. The elephant is in the fact that the hired content writers, over time, cannot deliver authentic, innovative, and leading content. They will not admit it. Their managers know it; however, they act as if their company is producing brilliant content. A few enthusiastic employees from other departments notice it as well and do not call it as an issue.

Do you see the elephant yet? Why do you think several companies allow it inside and then act as if they do not see it? The primary reason, it seems, is a belief that their company’s core product or service has got nothing to do with the content they publish. Periodic posting, to them, is just a clerical checklist item. Once checked every week or a fortnight, they are supposedly on par with their competitors.

No one needs to be isolated and blamed for letting in the elephant (the missing fresh content). Companies should have a content team in-house and additionally bring in new practices.

How about letting the in-house writers interview the teams from other departments so that their thinking power is not limited to themselves? Or perhaps let folks from other departments write the content that gets polished by the content team?

Why not engage a different content writer each time from the freelance writers’ marketplace? The in-house team can perhaps contextualize and publish such content after tuning it to the company’s branding melodies. They could tag it, cross-reference to old artifacts published by the company, and more!

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Epilogue

The quality and authenticity of content directly impact a company’s overall success. It is a timely overhaul to fix the budget and allocate a part of it for lateral writers. Though it may seem intangible, the ROI from fresh-and-paid content is beyond doubt.