Content marketing has created a content conundrum.
Content marketing is fundamentally about creating buyer relevant, education oriented content, that supports the buying team as they progress through a buying journey. With this shift from vendor to buyer orientation comes great pressure on traditional content production methods and costs.
Blogs have emerged as the best way to create for content marketing. They are foundational to this endeavor. 
We know from blog work this content must be created consistently. One customer commented, “I need a constant stream of fresh content.” This implies not only frequency but scale. Of course, this has huge implications on resources, development times, content quality and costs.
But what do you do next? White papers, webinars, or any other of the Content Marketing Institute’s Content Marketing Playbook that lists 42 ways to connect with customers?
Where do you focus? Where do you invest your scarce time, effort and resources?
Apply Publisher Thinking
The principle of thinking and operating like a publisher provides an important clue. Invest where you can get the most leverage from your content investments. Select methods that can meet these frequency, scale and cost requirements. This depends on a sound content strategy and documented content frameworks that inform the “content of the content”.
Now, I know you’re thinking, video? Really? Ah, yes. But not with the traditional video production methods you are most likely considering.
For the information-oriented, educational video that is required for lead nurturing, as well as selling complex or solution offerings, we recommend a rapid development, low cost method to create modular, configurable video assets.
Once you have your core idea developed as a blog, it is relatively easy to extend this work to different purposes or use cases. How should these ideas be expressed to different audiences? Message delivery will change based upon buyer roles, issues, at different buying stages or industry vertical nuances. The blog forms the basis for your scripts. The hard work is done.
Now, take a few minutes to storyboard your script and create supporting visuals. This is relatively easy and affordable. Develop a habit of continuously acquiring and building visual assets. Soon you will have a database that will continuously lower the time, effort and cost of video creation.
There are huge opportunities for leverage with video throughout your organization. Video applies to your marketing and demand management, training and selling activities. If you sell through a channel and create video this way, you can leverage these assets into partner branded and relevant marketing, training and selling videos — powered by your organization.
When you factor in the different versions that are required to fulfill on the expectations of content marketing initiatives, and master rapid development techniques, this approach can indeed be the second best way to create content.
