Casting your team: Step Four in making content marketing work for your business

The previous step in our practical six-step content marketing guide showed you how to create an in-house ‘buzz’ around the content marketing concept. In a big picture sense, though, content marketing is about projecting your organisation’s vision, mission, strategy, IP and short-term objectives into the public arena.

But just as all movies need a script, they also need star performances from human actors to lift the plot from mundane to magnificent. An important part of your job as a marketing manager is to cast the right people in roles they can shine in.

Step 4: Transform talent into stars

A well-crafted content marketing plan opens up plenty of opportunities for both traditional corporate communication actors and exciting new digital-age roles – if you get the combination right, the result could be a blockbuster. However, a couple of rules apply:

• Cast with a commercial eye: Identify the kinds of talent you need to support the bottom-line corporate performance (for example, consumer savings advocate or a fixed income commentator), while keeping an eye out for other hidden talents.

• Back talent with ongoing support: It’s not enough to simply cast a talented performer in a potentially starring role and wait for the magic. All performers need mentoring and direction – support them into leading career roles and they will likewise support the ongoing success of your firm.

Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, tells us more about the skills we should be developing in our staff in order to do content marketing well in our recent catch up.

Stay tuned next week for step 5 in our content marketing journey, where we will be sharing how to code content marketing into your corporate DNA.