Con­tent mar­ket­ing is all about deliv­er­ing the right con­tent, with the right mes­sage, to the right con­sumer, at the right time. A brand’s con­tent can help con­sumers at every stage of the pur­chase fun­nel, which will help build trust and loy­al­ty – with the ulti­mate goal of increas­ing rev­enue. Peo­ple respond to things they can relate to. So if you bring a bit of human­i­ty into your prac­tice, might you just win the con­tent war?

Mar­keters have always been cre­at­ing con­tent, but it was real­ly only the past few years that orga­ni­za­tions start­ed carv­ing out ded­i­cat­ed con­tent mar­ket­ing prac­tices, mak­ing it a strate­gic capa­bil­i­ty in the mar­ket­ing arse­nal. Here are six lessons I’ve learned from the con­tent mar­ket­ing trench­es.

1. Storytelling Not Selling

Before you cre­ate any more con­tent, step back and real­ize that con­tent mar­ket­ing is not about the hard sell. It’s about con­nect­ing with real peo­ple who have real chal­lenges, needs, and desires.

In the words of Jay Baer, “the dif­fer­ence between help­ing and sell­ing is just two let­ters.” Under­stand­ing this con­cept of Youtil­i­ty grounds con­tent cre­ation in real­i­ty and helps con­nects mar­keters with the needs of con­sumers and their poten­tial clients and cus­tomers. This approach will also help you build trust and loy­al­ty through authen­tic­i­ty.

A great B2C exam­ple of this is the city guides that AirBnB has cre­at­ed. By pro­vid­ing basic resources like trans­porta­tion options, neigh­bor­hood descrip­tions, and local tips, AirBnB is help­ing cre­ate an all-encom­pass­ing city expe­ri­ence for its cus­tomers, ele­vat­ing its ser­vice beyond just a place to crash.

On the B2B front, Hub­Spot pro­vides a wealth of free resources – from free tem­plates to stock pho­tos. While these assets cor­re­late direct­ly to its sales mis­sion and val­ue prop, for the mar­keters down­load­ing them, they are just help­ful tools that also hap­pen to posi­tion the brand as a great resource and sub­ject mat­ter expert on inbound mar­ket­ing.

2. Don’t Go In Blind

Only 44 per­cent of mar­keters sur­vey report­ed hav­ing a doc­u­ment­ed con­tent strat­e­gy, accord­ing to this year’s B2B Con­tent Mar­ket­ing Bench­mark report from Con­tent Mar­ket­ing Insti­tute and Mar­ket­ing­Profs.

While it’s tempt­ing to just start crank­ing out con­tent, par­tic­u­lar­ly if your team is small and needs to start pro­duc­ing out­puts, there’s val­ue in map­ping out your plan and writ­ing some guide­lines.

A few tips:

• Know your objec­tives upfront and make sure they align to organization’s over­ar­ch­ing goals.
• Cre­ate process­es that will improve work­flow by devel­op­ing check­points along the way and work-back plans to del­e­gate respon­si­bil­i­ties.
• Map out strate­gies at both a high-lev­el view and a tac­ti­cal line-item list. Con­tent cal­en­dars are help­ful if you actu­al­ly use them, so make sure you’re hap­py with the set up and are com­mit­ted to lever­ag­ing it.
• Write style guide­lines and iter­ate as you go. This will pay off as you scale your prac­tices and enlist out­side con­trib­u­tors.

3. Align With The Buyer Journey

As your con­tent mar­ket­ing prac­tice matures, under­stand how you can bet­ter tai­lor your con­tent to align with your cus­tomers and prospects and where peo­ple are along the buyer’s jour­ney. This align­ment will pro­vide struc­ture and a frame­work in which to devel­op your pro­grams.

A con­tent audit can seem intim­i­dat­ing but by tak­ing stock of what you have and assign­ing a cat­e­go­riza­tion of where it falls in the fun­nel, you’ll be able to see where there are gaps and oppor­tu­ni­ties. Don’t for­get to talk to the folks in the field, too. Forge alliances with sales and demand gen­er­a­tion teams to get hon­est, action­able feed­back.

Of course, don’t ignore oth­er ways to tai­lor your con­tent too. Lay­er on themes that coin­cide with sea­son­al­i­ty, world events, geo­gra­phies, and your inter­nal prod­ucts and ser­vices to real­ly make your con­tent sing.

4. Focus On Quality And Pace Yourself

Dur­ing a recent webi­nar, Ann Hadley of Mar­ket­ing­Profs com­ment­ed: “We don’t need more con­tent. We need bet­ter con­tent.”

Yes. A thou­sand times yes!

Con­tent mar­ket­ing should not be a series of sprints to just push out bursts of con­tent. Devel­op cam­paigns around key themes and fig­ure out how you piv­ot that con­tent into dif­fer­ent out­puts. This way, you can build upon your sol­id con­tent foun­da­tion and avoid com­plete­ly rein­vent­ing the wheel – a white paper becomes an email nur­ture and a webi­nar; an info­graph­ic becomes a video idea and blog series.

We spend so much time cre­at­ing these pieces so we should spend just as much, if not more time, get­ting the word out about them. At the end of the day, about 20 per­cent of your time should be spent on cre­at­ing con­tent while the oth­er 80 per­cent is spent on dis­tri­b­u­tion and pro­mo­tion.

Don’t burn your­self (and your audi­ence) out by hold­ing on to this notion that you con­stant­ly have to be pub­lish­ing some­thing “new” in order to be fresh.

5. Invest In Resources

As you build out your prac­tice, be sure to invest in the tools that will help you grow and get you where you need to be – this includes both soft­ware and human cap­i­tal.

On the soft­ware side, take advan­tage of free tem­plates and tools to help you stay orga­nized but real­ize that, as you scale, you may need to up your invest­ment in this area.

When it comes to your team, iden­ti­fy your biggest needs and find peo­ple with the skills that mat­ter most to you. Above all, look to hire not just writ­ers, but sto­ry­tellers – brand jour­nal­ists.

If head­count is lim­it­ed, focus on peo­ple who can be flex­i­ble and can com­ple­ment the skills you have. For me, that meant find­ing some­one who had more ana­lyt­i­cal focus.

Don’t for­get that you can (and should) lever­age clients and part­ners to help con­tribute to efforts. Give peo­ple the oppor­tu­ni­ty to guest post on your blog, for exam­ple; this gen­er­ates more con­tent for you with­out adding more man­pow­er and allows each indi­vid­ual to flex his or her thought lead­er­ship mus­cles.

6. Don’t Be Afraid To Take Risks And Have Fun

Last, but not least, remem­ber to try new things and have fun while you’re doing it. Even if you’re in a seem­ing­ly mun­dane indus­try, you can still make real­ly cool con­tent. Use your brand posi­tion­ing as your guide to make sure you’re not too far out­side the bounds of what feels nat­ur­al for your brand.

Some good exam­ples of this include:

GE’s Pin­ter­est Account  Who said Pin­ter­est was only for clothes and recipes?

Zen Desk’s use of videos. Cus­tomer sup­port soft­ware doesn’t seem that excit­ing, but the sto­ry cre­at­ed in the video below begs to dif­fer. Their bit on “Sh*t Sup­port Agents Say” shouldn’t be missed either.

At Ken­shoo, we work hard, but we try not to take our­selves too seri­ous­ly, proven by this “Clueless”-inspired info­graph­ic.

What lessons have you learned about con­tent mar­ket­ing?  become a bet­ter sto­ry­teller? Share your insights in the com­ments!