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5 people who should not produce your content
When a company first decides they ought to pursue some content marketing, they look around, and often end up getting one of these five candidates to create their content for them. Big mistake.
Sales
Sales people are often too caught up in their products, and the trade language of those products, to produce good content. I recently encountered an online catalogue which promoted "overstitching detail" on a men's shirt, and described a top as a "superior slub jersey", neither of which would mean anything to the average mass-market male who is their target. Sales people often know more about what goes into a product than they do about what their customers get out of them.
Corporate Communications
In many service organisations, the corporate communications department believes they should speak on behalf of their company. Yet they are often driven by regulatory requirements, by the need to declare facts, or the opportunity to publicise successes. And they rarely see the brand value in messages which are not directly linked to corporate goods or services. Corporate communications are usually more concerned with what a company wants to say, than with what its customers want to hear.
IT
Content is not a technical issue. Just because it is running on the web does not mean that you should get a computer scientist to create it. Technical knowledge may be needed in order to put it online in the best possible way, but that's primarily a production issue. Think of it like this; you wouldn't go to a printer to create a magazine, even if they publish the finished item.
That girl who's always on Facebook
You know, the one over there, who seems to spend all her time in the office online. She obviously knows how it all works, because she's always on Twitter, or Facebook, or whatever. And she always seems to know what's going on around the place. Why not give it to her, then at least she'll be online for you, rather than on her own behalf? Eh?
Two Men In A Bedroom
There are few barriers to entry into content marketing, which means that anyone with a computer can promote themselves as a content marketer - and two people with a computer can call themselves an agency. They may be a cheap way of writing and designing basic initial content. But could they fund a full photoshoot? Can they assess a repro house? Would they work on equal terms with a video production company, or pass a printer's credit check? A content strategy has enormous potential; your agency should have the capacity to match.
