The Balancing Act Of Good Content Marketing

Part of what makes life so challenging and so rewarding is finding balance. Whether you're balancing your checkbook, your time between work and play or you’re just trying not to embarrass yourself in yoga practice, without balance, you’d be, well, off. The same goes for content marketing. The best and most effective content marketing is created using both an artistic and a scientific approach.

So how do you find this balance when creating content for your business? For starters, you need to have a well-rounded team that is dedicated to working together in the creation process.

What? That’s like bringing Macs & PCs together! It can be done. And once your team realizes how well their separate strengths and systems actually work together, you’ll have the perfect formula for powerful and impactful content that works.

Where Your Creative Team Comes In

A defining characteristic of “creative” or “artistic” types is that they are innovative and original. They never cease to find new ways to think about, view and present the world to their audience. And that’s what we value the most in our creative team members. It’s what helps them determine what language and tone will be most compelling and most effective when telling their story.

Let’s face it: if your content is composed of facts and only facts, you might as well be trying to sell a book on the history of reading to a 10th grader. You’re not going to get a single bite. You need to tell those facts in an inventive way, using fresh language that taps into the reader’s emotions or needs, and lets them know that you’ve got something they want.

But how do you know what your reader wants? (See, what we did there?) Well, although we couldn’t create good content without this innovative mindset, it’s certainly not all that goes into the creation of quality content. We also need our analytical-minded folks to get involved.

Where Would We Be Without Research?

Remember your first research paper in high school? How about your last? Which was better? We’re willing to bet it was your final research paper. Why?

Well, aside from the fact that your writing skills (hopefully) improved drastically by your senior year, your final research paper was probably also written after months and months of research, as opposed to the whopping 5 hours of effort you put into your freshman paper.

Well, the same applies to your content marketing. Without extensive research into who your Buyer Personas are and what has worked in the past to generate leads, your content is going to be off-balance and less effective than it could and should be. You need to have a team that takes the time to do the research and notice trends and patterns in regards to what has and what hasn’t worked in the past.

Who Are Your Buyer Personas?

By having your analytical-minded team members put in the time to research the patterns and preferences of your Buyer Personas, you’re actually making your creative team’s part of the process much easier and much more effective. Because if you don’t know who your target audience is, finding the right tone and word choice for your content is just a guessing game.

Good research will take into account your Buyer Personas lifestyle, personality, age, income, preferences and buying patterns (for starters). And by identifying these things, you’ll know how to better customize your content to your potential customers needs and wants.

In other words, you’ll be left with content marketing that is of higher value to your potential customer and that is more effective at generating leads. And that’s exactly what you want!

A Formula That Makes Sense

It doesn’t take long to realize that when you combine your creative and analytical teams and allow them to use their strengths on a collaborative effort, you get content marketing that is exponentially more effective and of a much higher-quality. Why? Because you’re finally working with a balanced formula!

Remember the “balancing chemical equations” test you failed in high school? Don’t let those bad memories make you fearful of balanced equations altogether. With a great creative team and a great research team, balancing this equation is easy. And the end product is far better than the grade on your chemistry final – trust us.