How to Sustain Your Content Marketing Program? Delegate.

Coming up with enough content to sustain a robust content marketing program can feel like a Sisphyean task. Every time you get that boulder of a good idea pushed up the hill, the gravity of the endless demand for fresh content rolls it right back down to the bottom again. Most of us don’t have time to wait on the lightning bolt of creativity to strike for every post that needs to be made, so how do you keep the content ideas coming when you’re staring a blank screen?

One word: delegation.

I don’t mean that content creators should foist their jobs on someone else. I do mean that they don’t have to be the only ones coming up with ideas for the content.

So long as your company is more than a one-person show, you have at least one other person whose experiences, interactions and perspectives can help generate content ideas. Need to sustain your content marketing program? Tap into the rest of your team.

Leverage the power of subject matter experts

If your company or client has a sales team and/or a customer service, you’ve got people with boots on the ground who may have a lot of insight into what your customers are most interested in hearing about. Use that insight to your advantage.

A program, either formal or more informal, to solicit ideas from the front line leaders can often produce content ideas that will have a ready and eager audience. Interview internal subject matter experts (SMEs) about:

• The industry trends they see happening
• The questions they get asked the most by customers
• Topics where customers most often experience confusion or have a misunderstanding about a product or service
• How customers like to receive information (videos, newsletters, articles, etc.)
• Any industry changes that will require an education push, such as regulation changes, mergers, economic shifts or other factors

Oftentimes, those with the most street-level knowledge are also the busiest, so let them know that you’re asking little of their time, just a chance to pick their brains for 30 minutes or so.

Others within your organization who don’t interact regularly with customers may also have some unique perspective to offer. Consider talking to leaders in engineering, research and development, human resources, packaging and more for insights you may not have expected.

Particularly since content should ideally be a mix of informative and entertaining, these folks may have some fascinating things to share that you may never have thought of on your own.

You can satisfy the content creation beast by using your team as bait. Complete a few of these SME interviews, and you may find yourself with enough content ideas to keep your calendar full for months.

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