When you hear “shall we update our website” or “our site needs a revamp” how does it make you feel? For most of us, even for us creative agency folk who produce websites daily, the “yaaah it needs doing” is often quickly followed by a “ooooh…we have to get the content together”.

Getting the content together for a marketing project (and by this, I mean the on-page text, images, quotes, facts, figures, case studies etc.) leaves most of us with a sense of dread! And, it’s not just websites, the same applies for a lot of the collateral we produce as businesses such as a; presentation, brochure, leaflet or video.

Content can be the biggest barrier to change. But it doesn’t have to be.

Our tip is to have your plan, strategy or brief in place before you commence with the next stage of your project; content should be considered first.

It will take time upfront, but it will be worth it in the long run. It doesn’t even have to be the final approved content, just an idea of what’s required and your vision.

A content plan;

• Will give you a good idea of what content/collateral you already have and what’s needed.
• Quickly ascertains in your mind if you require additional help and input from others; in your office, external departments, copywriter, clients, partners etc.
• Helps inform your schedule, e.g. if you require additional support what time frames are you looking at until content is produced?
• Helps you focus on what you are trying to achieve, key messages/words you want to include and what job you want your content to do on each page; raise awareness, sell, promote, prompt action from the customer etc.
  • Use customer data and insights to inform priority pages and where content should appear in relation to attract, want, need, desire, next actions.
• Set-out will determine where to cut / add material accordingly.
• checking your content ticks all the right boxes before the project progresses into design and production stages.
  • giving you a blueprint to cross reference your project goals and objectives
  • checking your content ticks all the right boxes before the project progresses into design and production stages.

Having a content plan will save you time and ultimately money in the long run, so it’s worth investing the time to get your content in order as it will help with the smooth running of your project. As with any plan it can be tweaked and changed. Your plan is the foundations from which you build your project and progress to the next stage.

When producing our Five Talents site recently, we found it difficult to talk about ourselves and what we were like outside of work. So, we enlisted the help of our friends, family and the people who loved us the most to help complete our team section. A simple shout out on Facebook did the trick, telling us in their own words what they thought of us. It was emotional but lovely as mostly people were very kind and it’s not often you hear people speaking so kindly of you unless there’s something wrong!

So, our tip, if you know the barriers stopping you from getting on with the job in hand, hatch a plan and enlist the help of others if needed. Otherwise, it’s a case of getting your content head on and working your way through the plan – you’ll feel great once it’s done and next time you have a similar project those shudders may be fewer.

We face the same barriers most businesses face – fee paying work has to come first! If you really don’t have the time, team or support you need to make the changes you need, one of our new bundles might be the solution? Take a look and give us a call.