We’ve all heard the saying: Content is king. But guess what? The king had a lot of servants and royal subjects working for him. You and other craft makers? Not so much.
So, what to do if you don’t have the resources of a king but want to behold the great treasures content marketing can provide? Keep reading. We’re going to take a spin through why content marketing matters, how to create great content with limited resources, and how to distribute your content to work hard and save time.
Why Content Marketing Is Imperative
Today’s consumer is inundated with content. Whether watching TV on multiple devices, listening to the radio, streaming podcasts or music, or scrolling anything, we are a society full of content and content consumption. So, if you aren’t putting content out there, where will consumers discover you? How will they, on a scale large enough to sustain your business, know you exist? And more importantly, how will you become one of the few brands they spend their dollars on?
Today’s consumers need to get to know you, learn to like you, understand the value you bring to their lives, and ultimately decide to be in a relationship with you when they finally pull out their wallets. To lead them on this journey, consistent, engaging, relevant, and on-brand content is key. This means allocating resources to creating content for your brand consistently, including emails, social media posts and comments, articles, videos, photos, and more.
Before you can create content that works hard for your brand, you need to have a firm grasp on a few things. First, your brand story. Then, your brand voice and brand guidelines. Next, you need to deeply understand your target consumer. These are the pillars of all good marketing: to minimize waste and maximize results, including content.
How to Create Content That Works Hard for Your Brand
Once you fully understand the key elements of your brand, you’re ready to create your content strategy and execution plan. We’re all friends here — let’s be real about the situation. No one has wads of cash lying around with nothing to spend it on or people on payroll with too little to do. So, let’s ensure every precious resource you allocate to creating content works hard for your brand by getting new people to discover you, enticing existing fans to engage with you, and driving sales.
Great content solves a problem, explains something, reveals a surprise, or excites your target consumer and connects back to your brand story. The goal of providing free content is to create genuine interest and desire, which eventually leads to a sale. It is a long game, but it doesn’t get any shorter if you delay starting.
The first step is coming up with content ideas. Batch your ideation work and plan it out. This is a proven yet underutilized approach for creating content with limited resources. Sit down with your team and dedicate some time to coming up with ideas and creating a content plan for at least three months at a time — longer if you can. It will feel like you don’t have time to do it right now. Make time for it, because it is important to growing your brand. In the long run, batching this work will save time, energy, and frustration while allowing you to get ahead and drive better results. This also enables you to look across the span of time and relevant consumer touchpoints to make sure you’re hitting on all key messages that are important to communicate in order to drive interest, sales, and loyalty.
To help you get to your good ideas quickly and effectively, here’s one approach we teach in our Craft Alcohol Marketing Bootcamp. As you get started, remember to brainstorm freely with no restrictions. Then edit. Or as Ernest Hemingway was known to say, “Write drunk, edit sober.”
Ask yourself questions like:
- What do you love talking about?
- What parts of your brand story do you want to share?
- What do you enjoy teaching others about?
- What areas do others on your team have expertise in?
This part of the brainstorm should be relatively easy since it’s tapping into your team’s natural interests and abilities.
Think about your target consumers’ interests and passions.
Ask yourself:
- What are they interested in?
- What goals are they trying to achieve?
- What kinds of information would they share or show off
to their friends?
If you feel like you don’t know your target consumer well enough to answer these questions, do that work first.
Take inspiration from others. Think about what headlines you click on and which articles and emails you enjoy reading. Then apply your own unique angle to the topic. Since your brand story and target consumer differs from that of the original content creator, it’s often pretty easy to do. Don’t forget to gather inspiration from yourself as part of this by reviewing what content of yours performed well in the past.
Finally, a few content areas specifically valuable for craft alcohol makers to explore for content around the broader category of alcohol and drinking:
- Education about alcohol styles (especially unique or new ones), the craft movement, history, and people
- Alcohol making and drinking terminology, processes, or techniques
- Helping consumers understand and expand their drinking palates and use cases
- Happy hour and entertaining at home
- Once you have all of your ideas gathered (aim for 100+ — seriously, you can do it!) it’s time to start narrowing them down. Use your brand story, voice, and target consumer understanding to do this. Group ideas into campaigns around similar topics or dates, including those national and global drink holidays. Then it’s time to think about the exact types of content you’d like to produce and where they should be published.
Building a Content Creation & Distribution Plan
It’s time to get specific about where consumers will find and interact with your content and what type of content it will be. Places might be your website (articles, videos, recipes, event notices, images, etc.), social media (posts, stories, reels, lives, videos, pins), your email newsletter (images, videos, links, email copy, subject line), and more. To stave off the overwhelm with limited resources, first decide where your brand actually needs to be present. Trying to create every type of content for every possible channel is unrealistic and unnecessary. Be thoughtful and choose places you know your consumer enjoys in addition to the imperative ones, which are your website, at least one social media platform, Google MyBusiness Page, and an email newsletter.
Now it’s time to bring your content plan to life. Make a grid of all types (article, video, recipes, etc.) of content you’ll be producing for the platforms you chose across the top, then all of your great ideas down the left-hand side. Now start populating your plan. Add columns for timing, ideal content creator, and any other thoughts as they come up.
When you’re doing this, here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Publish everything to as many places as make sense, knowing your audience in each channel and factoring that into your decisions and making adjustments where appropriate.
- Consider how people use each platform. Instagram, for example, isn’t known for great link clicks or long video watch times.
- You don’t have to publish everywhere at once. Share the same content multiple times with different angles and visuals. Spread the reshares out across time and distribution channels to maximize value.
Let’s take an example of one new website article per week, one monthly consumer newsletter, one daily post each to Instagram and Facebook, and one weekly pin on Pinterest. Some quick math gets you to 846 pieces of content in a year. Yikes!
This is where the beauty of repurposing content comes in. In the sidebar, we’ve taken one blog idea to show some of the many ways it can be repurposed to fill and drive more value from your content calendar. Remember, editing content for a different platform or purpose often takes minutes instead of the hours it takes when starting from scratch.
Push yourself at the strategic level before creating and publishing. Think about the different ways you can present the information on this topic. Then you’ll find yourself quickly and easily filling out your content calendar without having to create 864 individual pieces of new content. Get in the habit of scoping out content assignments fully before anyone starts creating with this in mind. Clear direction means creators, yourself included, spend much less time on developing and editing. Lastly, find and use a content management and social media scheduling tool consistently across your entire organization. This is crucial when you have limited resources.
Creating great content takes time, but if you prioritize it, plan strategically, write it with your brand and target consumer in mind, and distribute/repurpose it intentionally, it will drive real results for your business. Remember, this gets easier over time. You’ll start to find your own shortcuts, hacks, and processes. Patience, focus, and commitment to creating content that kills is worth the effort it takes to deliver real results for your brand.
13 Ways to Repurpose Content Across Multiple Platforms
We’ll keep it super simple with a blog post on the bourbon old fashioned cocktail recipe. Here are some ideas to get your creative energy up:
- Original cocktail recipe article posted on website.
- Article with featured photo posted on Facebook with the opening few lines from article to pull people in to click on the link to read more. This can be repurposed to distribute more broadly, at least across relevant channels, such as:
- Article with featured photo on Instagram with opening few lines from article to pull people in and click on the link to read more
- Article with featured photo on Pinterest with an indication that the recipe is on the website and to click the pin to get it
- Article highlighted in your email newsletter
3. Cocktail photo from article posted on Instagram with recipe in caption
4. Close-up video of the cocktail being made as an Instagram Reel
5. Infographic that breaks down the key ingredients & measurements for the perfect bourbon old fashioned on Pinterest
6. Images of the bourbon being made with excerpts from the article about bourbon and this cocktail as the caption
7. Key quotes pulled out of the article and turned into graphic posts on all three social channels
8. Highlighting an FAQ or misperception about bourbon on Facebook, pointing back to the article
9. Highlighting an FAQ or misperception about the old fashioned cocktail on Facebook
10. Countdown IG story updates sharing how many cases of your bourbon are left for the bourbon you used in this cocktail.
11. Film your distiller talking about why this bourbon in this cocktail is so special then pull quotes from the video to create even more content.
12. Create new sets of social sharing posts for each unique idea or conclusion presented in the article (often there’s one every paragraph or two if it’s well written).
13. Turn the original content into a podcast or video, or even split the original idea into two pieces of content to start: one article about the history of the cocktail and the bourbon you just launched that you’re featuring in the cocktail (those could be two separate articles, too) and a link in the article to a separate cocktail recipe on your site.
