How to Create Quality Content When Nobody Wants to Do It

A key challenge for every marketing team is producing quality content. The solution is to create an internal content marketing capability. The primary drive behind producing content internally is the need for buying staff content. Your internal team has more product knowledge than any 3rd party content writer. This is where the quality content your buyer seeks comes from.

It sounds great right? Yes, but most likely the internal team doesn’t think so. Those who have tried to implement internal content marketing have run into roadblocks. We will discuss how to overcome those roadblocks.

Common Roadblocks for
Internal Team Content Development:

• “It’s not my job”
• “I’m not a writer”
• “I review and approve copy written by agency copy writers”
• “I’m way too busy for this extra work”

Your internal marketing team will rebel against writing their own content. They think it’s a copywriter’s job. You may start to agree when you’ve become the minority. If you want to be a successful inbound marketing organization, you must do content marketing right. You must convince the team that this is the best way to secure their jobs. That this is how the new buyer wants to buy before talking to our sales reps. Internal writing will produce quality content the sales rep needs to sell when they are not present.

So what can you do to change the attitude towards building an internal team of writers? How do you inject adoption? The answer is easy. You Gamify it.

Introducing Internal Content Marketing Gamification

Gamification it is the hottest trend to drive behavior of internal teams. If you Google the term, you can read for hours on end. The primary form of Gamification that will work with Content Marketing is the “Status Marathon”. These games use status ladders and rewards. Think of frequent flier programs in the airline industry. The “game” is deployed over time and you’re keeping track of each writer’s status. An example is, use as a quarterly/annual leaderboard contests. You can do this across many metrics that your content can be measured against.

How to Measure Content Marketing for Gamification

There are many ways you can measure and grade content marketing. You can do this by quantitative and/or qualitative attributes. Receive a copy of our Content Grader when you sign your team up to attend SBI’s research review session here. Not only will you receive access to this great tool for free, you will get:

• Unlimited access to sales & marketing tools used by top organization
• An onsite review of SBI’s 2014 Sales & Marketing Research Report

Here are five important Quantitative measurements to include when gamifying:

1. Views –If no one is reading your content, that’s a problem. You need to track the number of overall views and look for trends.
2. Call-To-Action (CTA) Conversion Rate – Content needs to have a CTA. If it’s good content, it will drive the reader to take action. Track how many of your readers “click” on your CTA.
3. Conversion Rate – Your CTA offer must be valuable. For the reader to declare themselves, the offer must be worth it. Measure the conversion rate of the CTA offer.
4. Social Shares – To be found, you want social shares. The more social shares, the more views. The more views, the more leads. Make sure you make it easy for your content to be shared.
5. Quality Leads from Ideal Customers – This is where you should place the heaviest point values. The leads must be worth it from the target personas that are your ideal customers.

Here are five Qualitative measurements that can increase the quality of your content

1. Content Headlines – i.e. Blog titles. Great blog titles are the most important element of a blog. It is the first impression to intrigue the reader to read more.
2. Hierarchy of Sales Message – The ultimate purpose of your content is to pull the reader through their buying process. Your sales message should pull them through and ensure they buy from you (The Content Grader Tool breaks this scoring up into 5 levels).
3. Persona Match – Your content must be purposeful. It must be directed to your Buyer Personas. It must resonate with your Persona’s goals and objectives. It must speak their language.
4. The Content Body –Communicate as effectively as possible. Make the content “Easy to Understand” without complicated run-on sentences.
5. The CTA Offer – You should strive to offer something of value that is relevant to the content. Take advantage of every opportunity to drive a lead.

Key Takeaway:

Marketing leaders understand that content is the key to inbound marketing success. Building an Internal Content Team is the best option at producing quality content. It’s not easy and internal team members don’t want to do it. Inject adoption and excitement by Gamifying Internal Content Marketing. Sign-up here for a free gamication overview and see what top organizations are planning in 2014.