Acting — not just thinking — like a publisher is the way to
go
For many years, there has been discussion around the idea
that a brand has intrinsic value as an asset. According to Brandchannel, some companies,
including L’Oreal, Gucci and Prada have captured the value of their brand directly
on their balance sheets.
Actually, this is nothing new. In fact, here’s what the chairman
of Quaker said about the value of brands at the turn of the century — not the turn
of the last century, mind you, but in 1900:
"If this business were split up, I would give you the
land and bricks and mortar, and I would take the brands and trade marks, and I
would fare better than you."
So the valuation of a brand has been around for a while. But
what about the value of your content as an asset?
Okay, back to reality. I don’t believe content will find its
way on a company’s balance sheet anytime soon. But I do think brands should be
looking for ways to leverage their content as an asset as opposed to thinking of it as just an expense.
Every brand will do this differently, of course, and that
makes perfect sense. But we all need to think and act like publishers.
Sure, everyone says
think like a publisher, but what does that mean?
When a publisher wakes up in the morning, they aren’t
thinking about their product (the magazine they publish, for example), they’re
thinking about what will interest their readers.
What’s going on? What problems do my readers have today that I can help them solve?
That’s how publishers have been thinking for hundreds of years.
But how does a publisher act?
Publishers break down their issues into sections, right? You
should, too. But the sections that might work for one brand (think Popular Mechanics) won’t work in others
(like Southern Weddings). This is
where each brand will need to get specific — content that might appear in the Outdoors
section of Popular Mechanics would be
very different than the Outdoors section (if there were one) in SW.
Since I work in the exciting world of insurance and
financial services, where all of our sections are typically the same, (you
know, auto, home life…) we needed to create a program that includes three much more
important sections: content marketing, content management and content
distribution.
Wait, aren’t those
all the same?
We don’t believe so. These three elements are interrelated,
certainly, but they are also quite different. Here’s how we define them:
Content Marketing is the creation/curation of timely, useful,
brand-guided stories that engage a targeted audience, earning their trust and
enthusiasm and, ultimately, attracting or retaining customers (whew!). We like to call this ‘story manufacturing.’
Content Management is system-based governance/technology that helps
handle, curate, tag and store content, enabling search and easy retrieval while
remaining channel agnostic. This is ‘story
warehousing.’
Content Distribution is the delivery of brand-guided stories in owned, earned and paid media that ensures the right people get the right message at the right time and in the manner they prefer. This, of course, is ‘story distribution.’
The main point here is not for others to use these definitions,
but to encourage you to find your own.
In order to leverage your content as an asset, I believe you
need to define the key components of your content program — you know, those
sections of your publication — so everyone is on the same page in your
organization, regardless of whether everyone
is three people or 30,000.
For us, it helped to separate these key elements so we could
discover what we’re doing well, where we need to get better and we’re able to
work on them concurrently. For you, it may be better to have one element. Or
10. The idea is to find a way to talk about content in your organization that
will inspire others, because you can’t do this thing by yourself. It’s big.
So, if you haven’t already, go figure out the sections of
your content publication and start acting — not just thinking — like a
publisher today!
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