In the past, it wasn’t uncommon for marketers to throw together content haphazardly without any concern for depth, value or context. Today, however, with the quality of content being a determining factor in Google’s SEO rankings and with lead generation, marketers are giving their content initiatives a lot more TLC.
According to Eloqua’s “State of Content Marketing 2014” report, 29 percent of marketers are producing multiple assets per week, while 33 percent are blogging two to five times per month. But while marketers are putting more effort (and money) into their content marketing initiatives, don’t let them fool you –they aren’t doing it all themselves. In fact, 47 percent of companies are now outsourcing their content needs to a third-party content strategy vendor, according to the aforementioned report.
Content marketing—or the creation and distribution of custom, quality content—isn’t easy. There’s content planning, strategizing, editing, writing, designing and distributing involved which can be a big undertaking for organizations, especially small businesses. While most content strategy vendors will tell you to leave it all to them, they would be doing you a disservice. That’s because it’s not always in your best interest to outsource your entire content marketing operation. After all, you don’t want to lose all of your control…right?
So, let’s take a look at which tasks are best suited for a content strategy vendor and which are best to tackle internally.
According to a report conducted by MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute, the majority of companies are keeping administrative tasks, such as measurement and analytics, buyer persona creation, and segmentation on their to-do lists. This should come as no surprise as these obligations are decisions that need to align closely with a company’s goals and objectives, which are not often shared externally. In terms of outsourcing, responsibilities like content creation, design, editing, and distribution are left to the experts.
While there are certain duties that should be handled internally, that doesn’t mean your content strategy vendor can’t serve as an advisor. At Content Boost, we not only assume the responsibility for conceptualizing and originating custom copy, social media tactics, and multimedia campaigns, but we also help our clients develop a content strategy that compliments their overall marketing strategy. Just think of us as your go-to marketing advisor.
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