How To Create Great Content When You Don't Have Time

Content marketing has become a darling in the marketing world in the last several years and is only growing in popularity. According to Marketingmag.com:

• 70% of B2B marketers plan to create more content in 2017 than in 2016.

• Content marketing will be a $300 billion industry by 2019 (doubling in under 4 years)

• 84% of organizations plans to increase or keep content marketing budgets the same

More and more executives are opening their purse strings to expand content marketing budgets. However, for many marketers in B2B companies, content marketing is, at worst, one hat among many hats one must wear or, at best, a one-person show. According to the 7th Annual B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America Report, 52% of marketers say lack of time has resulted in the stagnation of their organization’s content marketing success. 49% said the inertia was the result of content creation challenges.

Content marketing can be a key driver of business sales and success, but what happens if you don’t have the time or limited resources to produce quality content and carry out a successful content strategy? Here are a few suggestions to help busy marketers use their content creation time most efficiently:

“52% of marketers say lack of time has resulted in the stagnation of their organization’s content marketing success. 49% said the inertia was the result of content creation challenges.

CONTENT MARKETING TIP #1: HIRE A CONTENT WRITING FIRM I know, I know...if only you could ask for more money or resources for every marketing problem you have. Hear me out though! For starters, hiring a content writing firm is a lot cheaper than hiring another employee. Secondly, content writing firms can be a HUGE time saver. For example, by the time I press publish on this blog post, I’ll have spent 4-5 hours researching, writing, editing, optimizing and finding relevant images. That is a lot of time for one blog post! Fortunately for me, I enjoy writing and, as a freelancer, I have the time to do so. If you are in a time crunch, the amount of money spent on content writing could mean more time to carry out other marketing initiatives.

CONTENT MARKETING TIP #2: PROMOTE YOUR COWORKERS TO CONTENT WRITERS I wish I could take credit for this idea, but I’ve heard it at every marketing conference I’ve ever attended. It definitely isn’t a new idea, but it can be life-changing. In a previous life, I was responsible for a tech company's blog. I produced blog content that would do one of the following things: 1) position the company as a leader in the tech field, 2) address a common customer question or concern, or 3) capitalize on keyword phrases the company could rank for on Google.

I knew I had to focus on strategy and editing, but I could outsource some idea brainstorming and the writing portions of the content creation process to my colleagues. I wanted to create content that would address a common customer question or concern. Well then, who better to ask than our company’s sales team? I had regular meetings with each salesperson to identify the customer questions they get all the time. In 15 minutes, I had 2-3 blog ideas and outlines for each post. That meant that in an hour a month, I had 8-12 blog ideas that required only a little bit of time to fully flesh out into publishable posts.

Reaching out to your colleagues for content ideas is a huge time saver, but is also one of the best ways to create content that is useful to your audience. Think about it, your Sales and Business Development teams speak with potential customers and hear their concerns every day. Wouldn’t it be great if you created a video, a blog post or an article (or all three!) that addressed the very issues your customers cared most about? (For more information on the art of creating content around customer questions, read this New York Times article on Marcus Sheridan).

CONTENT MARKETING TIP #3: TURN ONE PIECE OF CONTENT INTO 10 The ultimate time saver? Taking a piece of content you’ve taken the time to create and turning it into multiple pieces of content. For example, I’ve turned one interview with our CEO into:

• Article

• Blog post

• Email

• Quote boxes for web pages

• Images/graphics

• Post on LinkedIn

• Post on Facebook

• 2-3 posts on Twitter

Had I been recording the interview, I could have added a slew of video content to our website, email and social media campaigns. The moral of the story is, this is a lot of content and all it took was 15-20 minutes of interview time.