Content creators’ goals involve understanding what target audiences want and catering to those needs because there’s huge demand for original content, personalization, and user-centric design.
We live in a time where new news is old news within minutes of publication and SEO has its own subdivisions. You might be thinking, “Hold on! It wasn’t that long ago that pushing out as much content as possible was the only way to create online visibility.” And you’re right. However, thanks to Google’s new algorithm, enumerable personalization/customer satisfaction surveys, ever-evolving technologies, and emerging industry best practices, the times keep changing on us and it’s our job to keep up and evolve with it.
The past decade has taught us that generic content is a major faux pas and that content isn’t necessarily king if it isn’t paired with design. Many teams struggle with an inability to keep up with supply and demand for original, personalized content which has led us straight into this creative content crunch. A bottle-neck situation where things are moving lightning-fast, so by the time you think you’ve caught up, you’re behind again.
We’ve got good news and bad news
As a content marketer, I’ll admit it was a relief to see the content shortage making headlines. It’s about time we talk about it.
In no way are we celebrating the crunch, but we’re glad that enterprise-level companies are noticing how important unique, quality content is to the personalization process.
Presently, content encapsulates everything from the written word and email campaigns to design, sales, and target marketing. But there’s more. It’s also about knowing when to produce the right content at the right time; a task that’s added a level of stress to marketing teams everywhere. Quality content and personalization paired with design are the new power couple. You can’t have one without the other.
In truth, this is great news. This pushes teams to focus on creating quality articles. Gone are the days of accepting non-user-friendly sites, mediocre content of little substance, or studies with no basis in fact.
The not-so-great news? The majority of marketers (71%, according to Content Marketing Institute’s 2019 Content Management & Strategy Survey) are really struggling to personalize. This begs the question … how is this possible with all of the available tech platforms made specifically for content creators, editors, marketers, and account leads?
Turns out having the correct technology in place isn’t always enough, especially if marketers aren’t using their systems’ maximum potential. But before we dive into total crunch mode, let’s take a step back.
Out with the old, in with the personalized
We’ve all landed on a seemingly interesting page with an optimized title, only to be disappointed by the mediocre content displayed across it. Luckily, there’s no longer value in this type of content marketing and readers are getting smarter, more digitally savvy, and are able to tell quality content from poorly written content very quickly. Because of this, businesses are paying closer attention to the pages they push out. Think about it, would you share a piece across social channels or tell a coworker about an article if it wasn’t insightful or informative? Most of us are more likely to view the source as unreliable because it hasn’t done its job.
The concern here is that many of these businesses aren’t unreliable or bad at what they do. Their only mistake was getting too caught up in quantity over quality. The fact is that trust is the basis of a successful personalized experience and if a site, product, or article is promising one thing and delivering another, that trust is broken and the brand will suffer. The same can be said about content management systems – selecting the right platform for your business is crucial and you should feel confident you’re getting the most out of your investment.
A 2018 Salesforce Study on Trends in Customer Trust discovered that 54% of customers did not believe that companies had their best interests in mind. This is one of the reasons industries are working so hard to shift their focus to original, customized content and personalized online experiences. Customers are demanding real-life engagement. They want to feel like a client, not a number. Can you blame them? Don’t we all want that one-on-one attention and sense of acknowledgment?
The solution is Sitecore
Recently, Sitecore has made a mission of creating an open discourse on the creative content crunch. As a longtime implementation partner, Content Bloom has seen the powerful impact customized integrations can have on a company. Things like:
- Taking back the power to control your customers’ experience
- Fully utilizing your content capabilities and unlocking hidden potential so your business can work at full capacity
- Customizable solutions meant to address challenges specific to your team
- Unify platforms, saving resources, and increasing overall productivity and efficiency levels
Luckily, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel with each new emerging study.
Start by understanding your content hub and knowing its abilities.
Find out if you’re able to unify platforms so that your digital asset management [DAM], content marketing platform [CMP], marketing resource management [MRM], and product content management [PCM] can be integrated. This allows for end-to-end management capabilities without having to go through numerous channels.
When your experience management and full commerce capabilities are synced, it’s much easier to personalize data and measure customer’s experience. Unified CMS platforms like Sitecore specialize in these types of integrations.
Secondly, ensure your team is properly trained and understands the systems and their capabilities fully.
This is often easier if a customized application is set in place so that marketers and product owners can navigate and edit pages without going through the backend or a chain of command.
If your company is in the midst of its own content crunch, our team of Sitecore consultants can help.
